Education and Public Outreach (EPO)

Gravitational Wave physics isn't your cup of tea?

The understanding of gravity does not end with Newton's Gravitational laws. Albert Einstein's papers on General Relativity paved the way towards Gravitational Waves. He showed that accelerating compact dense objects would create ripples on space-time fabric in space but the intensity of these emitted waves will be low that we won't be able to detect or observe it.

Fast forward 100 years and LIGO in Livingston and Hanford in 2015 detects gravitational waves for the first time. These waves were formed by mergers of two black holes.

The LIGO-India project has an Education and Public Outreach ( EPO ) team to go hand in hand with the progress of the project itself. The program, is dedicated to making the concepts of gravitational waves and LIGO accessible to everyone, from the general public and children to STEM graduates seeking to expand their knowledge and skills.

 

Regional Outreach

The outreach program of LIGO-India maintains participatory relationship with the people of Aundha Nagnath Taluka, Hingoli. LIGO-India EPO is committed to spread the right information about the project to the people of the Hingoli. We have conducted programs which were aimed at career and educational development for the people of Hingoli. 

National Outreach

With our national outreach program we educate people by participating in technology and science festivals in Indian institutes. In these festivals we talk about upcoming career opportunities in gravitational waves physics and LIGO.

 

Online Outreach

We organize online events, spread LIGO-India information and advertise public lectures for the people on Social Media.

 

 

Want to read more about gravitational waves and LIGO?

Head on to our blog "Gravity Matters"

Educational Resources

LIGO-India offer's exciting career opportunities in the field of gravitational wave physics and engineering.

Resources

Fantastic opportunity to participate in the development of gravitational wave instrument science through the LIGO-India Project! In the LIGO-Caltech SURF program, selected students will get a chance to work on summer research projects at the Caltech campus or at LIGO Observatory sites. Open to undergraduate students from India.

LIGO-SURF Caltech (India)

ICTS Schools on Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Graduate students in physics, astronomy, engineering graduate students, & postdocs working in GW astrophysics & related fields. A small number of highly motivated senior undergraduates can also be considered.

MaNiTou Summer School on Gravitational Waves

Master and PhD students, and also to young (and not so young) scientists who would like to get better acquainted with gravitational waves. 

Kavli-Villum Summer School on Gravitational Waves

Junior scientists (graduate students and advanced undergraduate students with a background in general relativity)

Research opportunities are available for undergraduate and masters students with LIGO-India at IUCAA, RRCAT and IPR as well as with the LI-TRD laboratories at various institutes in different parts of the country.
Organized by the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC):

1. Access to observatory datasets for analysis.
2. Tutorials offering guidance on software setup and the analysis and interpretation of LIGO data.
3. Well-defined learning pathways designed for both students and educators.
4. Implementation of a catalog query feature to facilitate rapid searches.

This free workshop provides a crash-course in GW data analysis.
You can participate online or in an in-person Study Hub.

1. GWitch Hunters: 

You can help scientists to study and reduce the noise in the gravitational detectors, with the goal of improving their sensitivity and catching more gravitational waves

2. Blackhole Hunters:

Using data from the TESS satellite, you can look at graphs of how the brightness of stars changes over time, and for an effect called gravitational microlensing.

3. Gravity Spy:

One can learn to characterize and classify potentially new sources of noise in the LIGO system.

4. Einstein @ Home:

instein@Home uses your computer's idle time to search for weak astrophysical signals from spinning neutron stars.

In Black Hole Hunter, your objective is to listen to gravitational wave detector data and determine whether its noise or merger signal.

The objective of the 2-player game; Position their black hole such that a passing star is engulfed. Whoever lets a star slip past loses!

The game puts you in charge of designing your own gravitational wave detector.

 

Contact Us

LIGO-India Education and Public Outreach: ligoindiaepo [at] gmail [dot] com

Saurabh Salunkhe: Senior Outreach Coordinator: saurabh [dot] salunkhe [at] iucaa [dot] in