Thirty Meter Telescope Project

• 11 Nov 2020

Why in News

The design of back-end instruments and other aspects of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project being installed at Maunakea in Hawaii has been developed by close collaboration between the 2020 Physics Nobel Laureate Prof. Andrea Ghez and Indian astronomers.

Key Point

• The Thirty-meter telescope (TMT) project is an international partnership between the USA, Canada, Japan, China, and India.
• It will allow deeper exploration into space and observe cosmic objects with unprecedented sensitivity.
• Other Global Projects with Indian Collaboration:
  
  • The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Project
    
    • The Indian scientists contributed in several aspects such as designing algorithms for analysis of signals from gravitational waves, estimating energy and power radiated from black holes etc.
    • Now LIGO-India is a planned advanced gravitational-wave observatory to be located in India as part of the worldwide network.
  • CERN Project
    
    • India became a full Associate Member of world’s largest particle Physics laboratory CERN in 2017, thereby getting full access to data generated there.
    • The contribution of Indian scientists there is mainly in building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and construction of two significant CERN experiments, CMS and ALICE.
  • Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR)
    
    • FAIR is coming up at Darmstadt, Germany for studying the building blocks of matter and the evolution of the Universe.
    • FAIR is a sophisticated accelerator complex that will use the high energy and ion beams to mimic the condition inside the core of the stars and early phase of the universe.
    • The role of Indian scientists would be to build NUSTAR (Nuclear Structure, Astrophysics and Reactions), CBM (Compressed Baryonic Matter) and PANDA (Antiproton Annihilation at Darmstadt).
  • Square Kilometre Array (SKA)
    
    • India has joined nine other countries to build the world's largest and most sophisticated radio telescope called Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
    • The core of the telescope will be based in Karoo desert in South Africa. Since the total detection area of the receiver dishes would exceed 1 square kilometer, it is called Square Kilometre Array.
  • International-Thermonuclear-Experimental-Reactor (ITER)
    
    • The International-Thermonuclear-Experimental-Reactor (ITER) is focused around creating an environment mimicking the Sun in laboratory conditions using nuclear fusion.
    • India’s scientists and institutions such as Institute for Plasma Research, Ahmedabad are playing an important role in this.

Source: PIB