Indian scientists unravel riddles of universe
By Raja Murthy
"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin'
away."
- Elvis Presley
MUMBAI - India is building a rare facility to explore one of the bigger riddles
of science - studying sub-atomic particles called neutrinos that physicists say
are among the fundamental building materials of all matter in the universe,
including humans.
The Mumbai-based Department of Atomic Energy overcame a major hurdle when, on
October 18, the Environment and Forests Ministry gave the go-ahead for the
US$270 million project, one of the biggest scientific undertakings ever in the
country.
Called the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO), the facility will become only the
fifth of its kind in the world, and the second in
Asia. Besides the 27-year old Kamioka Observatory in the mountainous Gefu
district of northern Japan, other neutrino labs function in the Soudan Mine in
the United States, Sudbury in Canada and the Gran Sasso Mountain in Italy.
''INO has been conceived on an unprecedented scale that no other basic science
project has been attempted in India,'' says Naba Mondal, a senior professor at
the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). "Neutrino study
is one of the most exciting fields in science." The TIFR heads the neutrino
project in a first-of-its kind collaboration with 26 organizations. [1]
Neutrinos are among the more maverick members of the particles family, which
includes remarkable sub-atomic beings like quarks, leptons, bosons and the
near-mythical Higgs boson, a particle with zero electric charge that is said to
contribute to the mass of all things.
Neutrino-studying projects worldwide are expected to increase understanding of
nuclear energy, biology, geology, physics and allied engineering fields that
benefit from observatory conditions deep below the Earth's surface.
The INO aims to get better acquainted with the Earth's structure, volcanic
activity and how tsunamis are born. Other objectives include churning out
highly trained scientists able to take on high-energy and nuclear physics
projects around the country and overseas.
Nobel Prize winning Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli first proposed the idea
of neutrinos in 1930, 26 years before they were physically detected. Scientists
say neutrons are critical to understanding the evolution of the universe and
energy production in stars like our sun. They are by far the most abundant
particles, apart from photons of light.
Elusive and extremely light, neutrino particles go through matter as if
transparent - a reason they are also called "ghost particles".
The sun, a small, humble, non-distinguished entity among trillions of stars in
the Milky Way galaxy, by itself produces over 200 trillion, trillion, trillion
neutrinos every second. The billions of these neutrinos passing through our
body every second are hard to detect, like ghosts.
The INO would initially study only atmospheric neutrinos emerging from cosmic
rays interacting with the atmosphere, Professor Mondal said. The underground
observatory will be built at Bodi West Hills, in the southern state of Tamil
Nadu.
The INO will also house the world's largest magnet ever built, 50,000 tons of
magnetized iron that will dwarf the 12,500-ton magnet in the Compact Muon
Solenoid project at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva,
Switzerland.
The gigantic magnet and related facilities will give scientists worldwide more
powerful tools to study neutron particles, part of the fascinating journey that
particle physicists are undertaking to understand the subtler truths of nature.
Physicists may recognize the irony underlying study of the smallest particles
in the universe with some of the most gigantic equipment on Earth. The likes of
the 26-kilometer wide Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator 100 meters
below the France-Switzerland border, and the proposed 50,000-ton magnet at the
INO, are pushed to their limits in the exploration of the tiniest, sub-atomic
matter.
At this quantum level of sub-atomic realities, conventional scientific
knowledge goes out the window, posing challenges that require courage and small
egos to deal with new truths.
Nuclear physicists, for instance, are deeply fascinated with strange neutrinos
that change form as they travel through space.
Called neutrino oscillation, this quantum-mechanical phenomenon involves a type
of neutrino – one of the six neutrino types: electron, tau, muon and their
anti-matter equivalents [2] - oscillating into other types as it propagates in
space. The INO is also expected to identify the lightest and heaviest of the
neutrino types.
"Another mind-boggling characteristic of these fundamental particles, which has
defied all conventional explanations, is their ability to exhibit both 'wave'
and 'particle' behavior under certain experimental conditions," writes
Professor P L Dhar, a senior faculty member of the Indian Institute of
Technology, New Delhi.
Kashmir-born Dhar, who resides in the sprawling Indian Institute of Technology
campus, says conventional science must also include the ancient wisdom of the
sages for a more holistic understanding of universal truths. "An intuitive
physical model of these fundamental particles is not possible, since our senses
can only detect either particle motion, characterized by a localization of the
object moving in a definite trajectory in space, or a wave motion,
characterized by a motion of the medium."
Particle physicists are perhaps among the bravest and most adventurous of all
scientists, daring to enter nature's inner sanctum, where existing academic
knowledge may be rendered completely inadequate. As they continue confronting
baffling phenomena they realize that subtler truths of matter cannot be studied
by excluding the subtler realities of the mind. Mind and matter are
inter-connected, one influencing and giving rise to the other in constantly and
rapidly changing phenomena.
The mind-matter connection is a fundamental reality that the Sammasambuddhas,
super-scientists like Buddha Gotama, experience and teach to eradicate all
suffering - after they first attain their final goal of full enlightenment
through practicing the universal mind-purification process of objectively
studying one's own constantly changing body-mind structure, at the level of
bodily sensations. [3]
With this powerful, penetrating, progressive insight into the subtlest truth
within, the Buddha declared the fundamental, material building block of the
universe as kalapa, the ultimate, indivisible particle of matter - the Holy
Grail for quantum physics. Kalapas arise and pass away trillions of times every
moment, the Buddha said.
Studying matter at its subtler levels without including the inter-connected
mind at its subtler levels will reveal only partial truths at the deepest
quantum domains. But like the INO neutrino-study effort, quantum physics will
spur the evolution of conventional science and unravel mundane realities for
better daily living - like perhaps a future with nuclear-powered cars and
cities.
The INO is a result of a four-decade-old dream that began with Indian
scientists becoming worldwide pioneers in neutrino research. One of the world's
earliest facilities to detect neutrinos was in the Kolar gold mines in south
India, where scientists from the TIFR worked in a makeshift underground
facility two kilometers deep. They detected the first atmospheric neutrinos in
1965.
The ghostly neutrinos are more easily detected in deep, underground facilities,
as their weak interaction with matter makes them almost impossible to spot near
the earth's surface. Layers of the earth absorb other background cosmic
radiation, filtering out the neutrinos for easier detection.
Unlike other neutrino detectors, such as the Super-Kamiokande in Japan or the
ones in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, the INO will be sensitive
to both neutrinos and anti-neutrinos - the anti-matter counterparts that are
the opposite entities to each existing particle of matter.
Mondal says particle physicists worldwide are also finalizing a project for a
mega-accelerator to produce artificial neutrinos, a facility that could be
located in Japan or Europe and be functional by 2012, coincidentally the
fateful year in the neutrino-disaster film 2012 [4]. The INO will also
study these human-made neutrinos from their artificial source thousands of
miles away.
Notes
1. INO-related institutions include the Aligarh Muslim University (Aligarh),
Benaras Hindu University (Varanasi), Bhabha Atomic Research Center (Mumbai),
Delhi University, University of Hawaii, Indian Institute of Technology,
(Mumbai), Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (Tamil Nadu), Institute of
Mathematical Sciences (Chennai), University of Kashmir, Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research (Mumbai) and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Center
(Kolkata).
2. Antimatter is matter not formed of particles and with an opposite
characteristic (electrical charge, for instance) for each particle. So the
anti-electron (negative charge) is the positron (positive charge). Matter and
antimatter are stable when they live apart, but whenever they meet they
annihilate each other and unleash a great amount of energy. The electron, tau
and muon have their antimatter: the anti-electron, antitau and antimuon.
3. Professor Dhar, a voluntary Vipassana teacher, says in his research paper
“Dharma and Science”: "It would not be an exaggeration to say that for a deeper
understanding of modern science, there is a need to develop certain intuitive
insights. These can enable us to have experiences more rich than those possible
with the basic five senses. Clearly the process of evolution of such a
multisensory personality can be hastened by living life in conformity with the
universal laws, the Dharma - that is, by practicing Vipassana." Many scientists
worldwide, including atomic physicists, have undertaken non-sectarian Vipassana
courses in the pure tradition as taught by Sayagyi S N Goenka, details of which
are available at www.vridhamma.org.
4. In the 2009 movie 2012, Dr Adrian Helmsley, an American geologist,
visits astrophysicist Dr Satnam Tsurutani in India and learns that neutrinos
from a massive solar flare are causing the temperature of the Earth's core to
increase. Adrian informs White House chief of staff Carl Anheuser and US
President Thomas Wilson that this will trigger a catastrophic chain of natural
disasters. In 2010, Wilson, along with other international leaders, begins a
secret project intended to ensure humanity's survival. Approximately 400,000
people are chosen to board ships called "arks" that are constructed at Cho
Ming, Tibet, in the Himalayas. Additional funding for the project is raised by
selling tickets to the private sector for a billion euros per person. By 2011,
humanity's valuable treasures are moved to the Himalayas under the guise of
protecting them from terrorist attacks. The male lead is played by John Cusack.
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