Indian scientists contribute to Big Bang Experiment

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment, which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang

 India has made major scientific and technological contribution to the new atom smasher, also known as the Large Hadron Collider. LHC was designed to answer several facts of fundamental nature of the universe that remain a mystery, said Prof Atul Gurtu, senior scientist, department of high energy physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who was also part of the major experiment held last month.

The world’s most powerful physics experiment that completed its first major test last month in Europe with the attempt to replicate the ‘Big Bang’ that created the Universe 13.7 billion years ago has several scientists of Indian origin. The Indian flag flew high when the world’s largest particle collider successfully fired a beam of protons all the way around a 27 mile tunnel on the France-Switzerland border near Geneva in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe and study its formation. India’s contribution to the $10-billion effort in search of the universe’s missing matter by smashing particles like during the Big Bang is equally impressive. Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists doing the experiment are from India.

In what must be considered as the world’s most ambitious and expensive experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the underground CERN facility near Geneva fired its first protons into a 27-mile-long tunnel. The LHC was designed to fire sub-atomic particles in opposite directions to collide at a speed of 99.9 per cent of the speed of light. 

Built to recreate the circumstances close to the Big Bang that created the universe in the first place, this, in turn, was designed to help us to understand many things that remain unknown. “We think we understand the universe but we only understand 4 per cent of everything,” said James Watson Cronin, the 1980 Nobel Laureate for Physics. It is this 96 per cent of matter, pervasive but unidentified that holds the universe together and accelerates its expansion.  

Indian laboratories, led by Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) at Indore have contributed substantially towards construction of the accelerator (LHC) itself with many components being fabricated by Indian industry and supplied to CERN, Gurtu said.

These had to satisfy not only exacting standards of precision but also follow a stringent time-line as dictated by the CERN schedule. Towards the scientific side, two Indian teams participated in different experiments. Prof Raghav Verma of Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, representing Indian scientists, has carried an Indian flag, IIT sources said. Built in a tunnel 100 metres (325 feet) below ground in a complex straddling the French-Swiss border, the LHC is designed to accelerate sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light and then smash them together replicating conditions which prevailed in split-seconds after the “Big Bang” that created the Universe 13.7 billion years ago.

One of the biggest quests will be to find a theorized particle
called the Higgs Boson, which could explain nagging anomalies about mass. The Higgs has been dubbed the “God particle” because it is believed to be everywhere but is so elusive. Each of these collaborations is huge with 1000-2000 scientists from 125-150 top class institutions from 20-30 countries participating in it. Each full detector costs around $400-500 million to build and the R&D and fabrication takes around a decade. LHC has been constructed at the European Laboratory of Particle Physics (CERN) located a few kilometers outside Geneva. Conceptualized around a quarter century back, approved for construction in the mid-1990s and now almost a decade in the making, this technological marvel of a machine which accelerates counter rotating beams of protons in two steel pipes 27 kilometers in circumference is ready to operate.

 It will become the highest energy particle accelerator in the world with 7 times as much energy punch compared to the existing accelerator at Fermilab, USA.

Asked the role of Indian scientists, Gurtu said they have been active in this field and had collaborations with their counterparts at CERN and Fermilab. However, it is for the first time that a concerted, coordinated and comprehensive contribution made by India towards such a huge international scientific program, he said.

One Indian team participates in the CMS experiment with TIFR as the nodal institution and includes scientists from BARC, Delhi, Punjab and Vishwa Bharati universities. The other team is in the ALICE experiment with VECC/SINP (Kolkata) as the nodal institutions and IOP, IITB, Jammu, Rajasthan, Aligarh and Punjab universities.

According to reports, the impressive show put up by the Indian scientists at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has opened the floodgates of a never-before interest in the country’s scientific talent pool. CERN is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory where the first such experiment is on to recreate conditions, which enabled the birth of Earth.

When India was given the responsibility of providing key equipment for the $3.8 billion (Rs 16,340 crore) Big Bang experiment on the outskirts of Geneva, laboratories around the world watched closely, with some even doubting whether India could accomplish the task. Now, top global labs have approached India with requests for scientific inputs to their projects.

Inquiries on Indian know-how have now come from the Fermi National Accelerator Lab, US’s foremost particle physics agency. “Impressed by our precision work, Fermi director Pier Oddone has sent feelers seeking to explore ways of co-operation,” said Vinod C Sahni, director of the Centre for Advanced Technology (CAT). CAT is the nodal agency, which did the bulk of the work on the Large Hadron Collider project or the Big Bang experiment.

Inquiries have also come from the International Linear Collider Steering Committee, another multinational physics project aiming at an even bigger experiment. “We have achieved two things from the Big Bang. An opportunity to prove,” says Sahni, “and praise”. “If you go to a body like CERN today and tell them you are from India, they look up to you with awe and respect,” said Sahni.

The experiment that began on Wednesday has been dubbed as the biggest scientific experiment ever. India provided 1,848 corrector magnets. This is half the number of the magnets required for the Big Bang project. “All of them worked as they ought to,” Sahni said.

BY LAVANYA GARIKINA