India applies for CERN associate membership

[SpArK]

India applies for CERN associate membership​

India has applied to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) at Geneva in Switzerland for associate membership.

This was stated by CERN official Rudiger Voss on Wednesday.

He was talking to journalists on the sidelines of a two-day conference, “Frontiers of Science,” which began here on Wednesday.

Mr. Voss said if India was granted associate membership, Indian researchers would be eligible for jobs at the CERN. Currently, researchers of institutes that collaborate with the CERN can only be deputed there for short periods of time. It will also open the gates for the private sector to the international research organisation.

The CERN was established in 1954 by 12 European countries. At present, it has 20 member-States.

According to a CERN press release issued in December 2010, at a meeting of the CERN Council in June last, discussions were held on opening the membership to countries beyond Europe and allowing the organisation to participate in future projects beyond Europe.

“As of now, any country may apply for Membership or Associate Membership of CERN,” it said.

Under the scheme, associate membership is an essential pre-requisite for membership to the organisation. Thus countries may apply for associate membership alone, or apply to become associate members on the route to becoming members of the organisation, it added.

The Hindu : News : India applies for CERN associate membership

 

[SpArK]

Member states as of now

There are currently twenty (20) member countries, 18 of which are also European Union member states.
+ Romania and Serbia.

Six (6) additional countries have observer status:

Turkey – since 1961
Israel – since 1991
Russia – since 1993
Japan – since 1995
United States – since 1997
India – since 2002

 

[twoplustwoisfour]

CERN Membership will provide greater opportunities for Indian scientists to conduct their research

 

[KS]

Excellent move.

But it is a bit odd wrt Russia - they are a Eurasian country with capital in Europe with one of the most advanced Nuclear knowhow. Still they are only a observer ??

 

[toxic_pus]

Wonderful.

LHC at CERN, has a little contribution from India as well. The following is a little old article that appeared in The Telegraph when LHC was about to go on-line.

It was about this time that India entered the scene. Before this, only an individual Indian had taken part in these experiments, but there was no collective Indian presence. By the Eighties, there was, however, a paradigm shift in our mindset. We in India began to dream of competing with the rest of the world. A group led by the late P.K. Malhotra of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research entered the Bubble Chamber effort at CERN. Calcutta, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, along with the universities of Rajasthan, Jammu, Chandigarh and others came to CERN in the mid-Eighties in a big way to design and build a marvel of a detector half the size of any standard room, called the Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD). The PMD consists of 55,000 plastic scintillator pads, typically (1-2) Cm2 in size. This was designed and built in India, mostly by rather young scientists. For the first time, two novel phenomena took place almost unnoticed. Calcutta’s Cyclotron Centre, in collaboration with the universities of Rajasthan, Jammu and Chandigarh formed a team, sharing the responsibilities. Small but efficient, clean rooms were built in the university premises and work started with much enthusiasm. This kind of collective effort on such a huge scale was the first of its kind in India. Second, two governmental agencies — the department for the development of atomic energy and the department of science and technology were merged for funding.

Meanwhile, my colleagues at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, wanting to participate in the ALICE project, incredibly enough, designed and fabricated an original chip, called Manas. About one lakh of them are hanging right now in the muon arm detector of ALICE. It has not been a cakewalk by any means. The competition was tough, and the battle was keenly fought, but eventually won by us.

One can see the 80,000 Manas Chips, created in the Saha Institute, make up the entire muon arm detector. With another 20,000 chips for the PMD, there are a lakh of them altogether.

Finally, the detector was shipped to CERN and took its position at the end of the beam line of CERN, Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). SPS till that time was to us just a name with the glamour of the Nobel Prize attached to it. But now we became part of the show. The idea of impending experiments was breathtakingly exciting. By the early Nineties, India became a key player on the world stage and ceased to be only a spectator. Experimental runs started and the PMD was a resounding success, and was rewarded with discoveries. Results from the PMD were presented in all major world conferences.

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Opinion | Inching towards perfect harmony

 

[SpArK]

^^^

You are back..

 

[Kinetic]

Wonderful.

LHC at CERN, has a little contribution from India as well. The following is a little old article that appeared in The Telegraph when LHC was about to go on-line.

It was about this time that India entered the scene. Before this, only an individual Indian had taken part in these experiments, but there was no collective Indian presence. By the Eighties, there was, however, a paradigm shift in our mindset. We in India began to dream of competing with the rest of the world. A group led by the late P.K. Malhotra of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research entered the Bubble Chamber effort at CERN. Calcutta, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, along with the universities of Rajasthan, Jammu, Chandigarh and others came to CERN in the mid-Eighties in a big way to design and build a marvel of a detector half the size of any standard room, called the Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD). The PMD consists of 55,000 plastic scintillator pads, typically (1-2) Cm2 in size. This was designed and built in India, mostly by rather young scientists. For the first time, two novel phenomena took place almost unnoticed. Calcutta’s Cyclotron Centre, in collaboration with the universities of Rajasthan, Jammu and Chandigarh formed a team, sharing the responsibilities. Small but efficient, clean rooms were built in the university premises and work started with much enthusiasm. This kind of collective effort on such a huge scale was the first of its kind in India. Second, two governmental agencies — the department for the development of atomic energy and the department of science and technology were merged for funding.

Meanwhile, my colleagues at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, wanting to participate in the ALICE project, incredibly enough, designed and fabricated an original chip, called Manas. About one lakh of them are hanging right now in the muon arm detector of ALICE. It has not been a cakewalk by any means. The competition was tough, and the battle was keenly fought, but eventually won by us.

One can see the 80,000 Manas Chips, created in the Saha Institute, make up the entire muon arm detector. With another 20,000 chips for the PMD, there are a lakh of them altogether.

Finally, the detector was shipped to CERN and took its position at the end of the beam line of CERN, Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). SPS till that time was to us just a name with the glamour of the Nobel Prize attached to it. But now we became part of the show. The idea of impending experiments was breathtakingly exciting. By the early Nineties, India became a key player on the world stage and ceased to be only a spectator. Experimental runs started and the PMD was a resounding success, and was rewarded with discoveries. Results from the PMD were presented in all major world conferences.


The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Opinion | Inching towards perfect harmony

India has a long standing cooperation with CERN, specially Kolkata.

PMD

ALICE

 

[BlueDot_in_Space]

India readies for big bang role at Cern


KOLKATA: India could soon play a more active role in the landmark big bang experiment going on at Cern in Switzerland. The department of atomic energy has applied for an associate membership that will allow Indian scientists to be employed at the project site and country's private sector to supply equipment and data.

So far, India's status has just been that of an observer country, allowing only academic and research institutions to take part in the project that seeks to replicate the creation of the universe through the collision of high-energy proton beams.

Announcing this at a convention titled "Frontiers of Science" in Kolkata on Wednesday, Rudigor Voss, incharge of international relations at CERN, said India could play a bigger role once they receive the membership.

"It could be a significant step for you. Associate membership will throw open opportunities for employment at Cern that will pave the way for a greater contribution on the part of Indian scientists. Also, the private sector could chip in once that happens," said Voss.

Scientists from the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics ( SINP) and the Variable Energy Cyclotrone Centre ( VECC) in Kolkata have been actively involved in the experiment over the last 10 years. A photon multiplicity detector (PMD) and a muon arm created by scientists from these institutions for the experiment are already in use. These two machines, city scientists believe, have already put Kolkata on the global science map.

"The membership will be a major impetus for science in India. Our scientists have been doing a great job there and they deserve to be a given a more permanent and prominent role," said veteran scientist Bikash Sinha.

The membership process, Voss explained, is still at an early stage. "To be an associate member, India must pay a fee of 9 million Swiss Francs or `35 crore. This is just 10% of the fee a country needs to pay to be a full member," said Voss. Cern has 20 member states. All of them are European countries.

Apart from providing key instruments, Kolkata is also a part of the grid computing system developed for the experiment. It is a tier 2 centre along with Mumbai that has access to the huge volume of data being generated at the project site. It is the analysis of this data that forms the central part of the experiment.

"That apart, India has also provided a very important software that helps to monitor performance at Cern. We expect India to play an even more meaningful role once they acquire an associate membership," said Voss.

 

[Kinetic]

^^^ Good to see we are taking more and more active roles in such frontier of science. There is a new generation synchrotron project to be built in Kolkata or else where. It will be one of the greatest achievement of India's science.

 

[Trichy]

Its good going. Atleast our babus clear it in time, i think. We need to do more research and development any ways.

 

[SpArK]

CERN expects developing tech for linear collider in 10 yrs​

KOLKATA (PTI): CERN, which is conducting multi-billion dollar experiments on particle physics, expects to be ready with the technology for a special linear collider for precision measurements of sub-atomic properties discovered by the Large Hadron Collider.

"We expect the proposal (for the technology) to be ready by the end of this decade," Philippe Lebrun, member of the CERN director-general's unit, told PTI.

Once built, The 'International Linear Collider' will be the next big accelerator after the LHC to experiment in particle physics.

Describing the LHC as a "super microscope", Lebrun said the purpose of the ILC is to probe matter at a small scale and precisely measure the phenomena observed by the LHC.

The basic purpose of colliders is smash the atomic particles so hard that they break and new particles can be discovered.

The high energy collisions could potentially give us information about many things ranging from black holes to extra dimensions.

LHC, the most powerful particle accelerator, aims to find a particle known as Higg's Boson which might explain why objects have mass and why mass is always positive. However, in its collision energy is distributed among the many constituents such as quarks and anti-quark and it is harder to analyse.

Noting there are many challenges regarding technology of the collider, he said two separate studies were being conducted to find the best technology for the machine.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), as the lead laboratory, is conducting the first study in collaboration with 41 institutes in 21 countries, while another by a consortium of scientists and engineers from American, European and Asian countries.

"India is contributing to both the studies", he said.

"The goal of the two studies is the same, but the competition is for a cost-effective and efficient technology," Lebrun, former head of the CERN Accelerator Technology, said.

Lebrun said some other issues like the geographical location of the collider, the governance structure of the global project and funding would have to be worked out.

Lebrun said the biggest challenge in building high-energy accelerators is their size -- a long time, often several decades are needed for their development and construction. Another big challenge is their cost.

Keeping in mind the big time gap taken between conception of a high-energy accelerator and its shut down, CERN has developed a computer-based data management system for future access to all technical information on the machine and its findings.

"We have used this data management system in case of the LHC. This can be accessed through the world-wide web. We think this will be a good way to bridge the time gap," Lebrun said.

He said to meet the data processing needs of the LHC, an important spinoff had been the invention of Grid Computing by which, instead of a mainframe, data is stored in clusters of computers connected through a grid of high-bandwidth communication links.

"Grid computing has some other uses as well like medical and geoscience applications. For example, it can be used in climate modelling and epidemic modelling. Besides, it can also be used in many areas of natural science," he said.

Two Indian institutions -- the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata, are connected to the CERN through grid computing, he said.
CERN expects developing tech for linear collider in 10 yrs - Brahmand.com