印度建造第三只“宇宙耳朵”，引力波定位更精准
When giant black holes merge or neutron stars crash together, they set the fabric of space-time ringing. These faint cosmic tremors are called gravitational waves, and since 2015, the twin LIGO observatories in the United States have captured dozens of them. But there has always been a nagging blind spot: with only two detectors, scientists can roughly trace a wave’s direction across a huge arc of sky but cannot pinpoint its exact source. Adding a third, widely separated detector changes everything, much like a third microphone helps a sound recordist locate a hidden whisperer in a crowded room.
That third ear is now taking shape in rural Maharashtra, India. LIGO-India is a near-exact copy of the American instruments, being built near the quiet town of Aundha Nagnath. The project, which broke ground in 2022 after years of planning, is expected to be fully operational by the early 2030s. Funded jointly by the Indian government and international partners, it will house a giant L-shaped vacuum chamber, each arm stretching four kilometers. Inside, state-of-the-art lasers will bounce between mirrors suspended on delicate glass fibers, waiting patiently for a passing wave to shift the light’s journey by a distance smaller than a thousandth of a proton’s width.
Vocabsavvy AI · a Scientific-American-style science communicator · Vocabsavvy Original