Physicists from India, China, Germany, France and United States attended the launch of the $160 million plan to build a state-of-the-art gravational wave detector at Gingin. The west coast of Australia is the best location for the southern hemisphere detector.

The Gingin detector should be completed by 2016, and would be one of only four in the world capable of detecting the waves.

The Gingin site was carefully chosen as the optimum site for AIGO.

The detector would be so sensitive, it could detect gravity waves produced a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, said UWA physicist, David Blair.

Professor Blair said, the gravitational wave detector would be able to peer through this fog, revealing details about the universe at the time when the first subatomic particles were being created.

Physicists from around the world will be attending the AIGO conference with lectures, workshops and discussion taking place at the Gravity Discovery Centre and the University of Western Australia.

The AIGO research facility at Gingin has an 80 metre interferometer facility, as well as workshops. Two hundred metres away from this is a major education centre. The entire facility is linked by a wireless network. Just to the north is the site of the Geosciences Australia Magnetic Observatory for monitoring the Earth’s magnetic field.

The starting point in the AIGO design is an innovative vacuum pipe design proposed by collaborators at LIGO, combined with CSIRO’s proprietory keyhole welding technology.

The preliminary design of AIGO consists of an L shaped pair of vacuum pipes about 700mm in diameter and 5 kilometres long, at right angles to each other. The spiral welded vacuum pipes will be made from three millimetre 304L grade stainless steel. All material will be pre-air baked.