A HIGH-TECH probe partly built by Scottish scientists which will one day help unravel the deepest secrets of the universe is to be blasted into space.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow will see a decade's worth of painstaking work come to fruition when the device is launched into orbit on Thursday.
The instrument will lay the groundwork for experiments that will examine 'ripples' in space and time caused by massive events in the distant cosmos, such as the collision of stars and black holes.
Scientist want to better understand these galactic disturbances, known as gravitational waves, which were predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity but remain elusive and hard to detect.
The probe will be placed on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, which is due to will blast off from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana atop a Vega rocket.
It is made of two two gold and platinum cubes which will float in a space capsule 900,000 miles from the earth at a point where they face the lest disturbance from other gravitational forces.
A very sensitive system called a laser interferometer, designed by the Glasgow team, will measure the distance between the two cubes to a scale as as precise as one hundred millionth of a millimetre, looking for tell-tale movements caused by any stray forces.
If the test works it will be used as the basis for later experiments to one day test for gravitational waves.
Dr Harry Ward, who leads the University’s LISA Pathfinder team, said: “For the last decade, we’ve been working very hard on LISA Pathfinder, which is a tremendously exciting project involving researchers from all over Europe.
"It’s exhilarating and a little bit frightening that we’re finally on the verge of seeing it set off on the mission it was conceived to undertake and I’ll be lucky enough to see it from the launch site in Kourou."
“The launch of the LISA Pathfinder is a major milestone, not just for us and the European Space Agency’s other partners, but for developing further our understanding of the universe."
He added: “Although this mission won’t be looking directly for evidence of gravitational waves, it’s a vitally important step towards the ESA’s eLISA project, which will place two detectors in space a million kilometres apart and will allow us a research opportunity which is totally unprecedented in the history of astronomy."
“It’s an exciting time to be working in this field and we’re looking forward to the next stage of the search for evidence of gravitational waves.”
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