Einstein's Gravitational Waves
And the two Pakistani Scientists who played a key role in this
discovery of the century:
As the story of one of the world's most influential scientific
discovery unfolds, it comes to the forefront that not one, but two
Pakistanis were part of the various research teams that contributed to
the discovery of gravitational waves.
Dr Nergis Mavalvala |
Imran Khan |
A young researcher from Quetta, Imran Khan, currently pursuing his
PhD at Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) in Italy, was one of the
co-authors of the Physical Review Letter (PRL) paper, submitted to the
LIGO Scientific Collaboration at the helm of this discovery.
"It was great to get selected among hundreds of applicants for the
Marie Curie initial training network programme 'GraWIToN' to become part
of the European team involved with the discovery of gravitational
waves," Imran Khan told Dawn.com.
The detection, announced last Thursday, confirms a major prediction
of Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an
unprecedented new window onto the cosmos. The 25-year-old researcher,
whose father is a retired armed forces member, hails from a middle-class
family residing in Quetta. Imran secured 892 marks in intermediate and
then availed a scholarship from FAST Peshawar, to complete his Bachelors
of Science (BS) in Telecommunication Engineering in 2011.He was the
offered a scholarship in MS Optoelectronics and Photonics Engineering by
a Turkish institute in 2015.
Karachi-born quantum astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala, Associate
Department Head of Physics at MIT is a member of the team of scientists
that announced the scientific milestone of detecting gravitational
waves, ripples in space and time hypothesised by physicist Albert
Einstein a century ago. Nergis Mavalvala is a member of the US-based
LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and played a major part in the research
which is dubbed the century's biggest finding by many.
Professor Mavalvala worked with researchers at the US-based
underground detectors Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave
Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory to build sophisticated sensors to detect
gravitational ripples created from the collision of two black holes some
1.3 billion years ago and had been hurtling through space to reach Earth
on September 14, 2015. Professor Mavalvala, whose career spans 20 years,
has published extensively in her field and has been working with MIT
since 2002. Mavalvala did her BA at Wellesley College in Physics and
Astronomy in 1990 and a Ph.D in physics in 1997 from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
-DAWN
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