India joins the global hunt for Gravitational Waves (GW) from monster black holes

A consortium of mainly Indian researchers under the banner “Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA)”, became a full member of the “International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA)” , an international effort to discover and study very low-frequency gravitational waves from supermassive binary black holes orbiting each other. InPTA regularly employs the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT), situated near Pune to monitor pulsars to obtain high precision timing measurements. The unique frequency range of the uGMRT, 300 - 800 MHz is not covered by other big telescopes used by IPTA, therefore the inclusion of uGMRT is crucial in improving the precision of IPTA to detect nano-hertz GWs.