Hyderabad: Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H) were part of an international team that made global headlines last week with their findings in the 'humming of the universe' project.
The international team consisted of astronomers and field experts from India, Japan, and Europe, all of whom were members of the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) and Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA) consortia.
The project findings, published in two papers in the ‘Astronomy and Astrophysics’ journal, provide evidence of relentless vibrations in the fabric of the universe caused by ultra-low frequency gravitational waves.
The theorised murmur created by gravitational waves, known as the 'humming,' echoes throughout the universe.
The project's results were obtained by using six of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes and monitoring pulsars, often referred to as nature's best clocks. One of the sensitive radio telescopes used was India's largest telescope, the upgraded uGMRT (Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope).
The results include an analysis of pulsar data collected over a span of 25 years.
The IIT-H team that participated in this discovery included Dr Shantanu Desai, a faculty member in the Department of Physics and Department of Artificial Intelligence, Aman Srivastava, a physics PhD student, Divyansh Kharbanda, a 2023 BTech graduate in Engineering Physics, and M. Swetha Arumugam, a rising BTech senior.
Additionally, Pragna Mamdipaka, a B Tech student in Electrical Engineering, is also part of InPTA and was actively involved in ongoing InPTA projects. IIT-H has been part of InPTA since 2018.
