The world's most powerful physics experiment that completed its first major test today in Europe breathes an Indian link with 30 scientists from India including a couple also behind the attempt to replicate the "Big Bang" that created the Universe 13.7 billion years ago.
The Indian flag flew high when the world's largest particle collider successfully fired a beam of protons all the way around a 27-km tunnel on the France-Switzerland border near Geneva in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe and study its formation.
Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists involved in the ten billion dollar multi-nation 'mother of all experiments' are of Indian origin.
India has made major scientific and technological contribution to this new atom smasher also called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), according to scientists of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). LHC is expected to answer several facts of fundamental nature of the universe that remains a mystery after the World's costliest experiment.
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, Prof Atul Gurtu, senior scientist, department of high energy physics, TIFR told PTI.
In the scientific side, two Indian teams are involved in different experiments. They included a scientist couple -- Sudhir Raniwala and his wife Rashmi-- from Jaipur. They are Associate Professors.
Sudhir Ranawala allayed safety fears about the high-speed collisions in the tunnel. "Cosmic rays in the universe send particles with much greater energies than those being achieved in the lab. So there is nothing to worry about," he said.
