Indian scientists contributed more to LHC

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 17 September 2010, 15:09 IST   |    8 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Indian scientists contributed more to LHC
Chennai: The Indian scientists' contribution towards building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been much larger than that of American scientists. LHC is the world's biggest particle accelerator near Geneva to simulate the 'big-bang' that caused the universe, reports M R Venkatesh of Deccan Herald. The LHC's Project Leader, Dr Lyndon Evans said, "The 100-strong team of scientists from India who participated in building the LHC at the 'European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)', was much less than the American Scientists contingent, but the contribution of Indians has been proportionately much larger". Evans, popularly known as 'Evans the Atom', said that supplies by Indian companies of certain components that went into the LHC, were of the highest quality. The LHC is an incredibly gigantic machine in a 27-km circumference underground tunnel for high-energy probes in the area of sub-atomic or particle physics, he said. Speaking on the occasion of IIT-Madras' technical festival 'Shaastra', Evans said while scientists and researchers from major Indian institutes like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre in Calcutta were working with LHC, there were no students from any of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)s. The Indian group of the scientists was particularly strong in heavy ion physics, according to Evans. There is a huge amount of money invested in the LHC in which over 3,000 scientists from 39 countries were working, he added.