India-based Neutrino Observatory Approved - To House World's Largest Artificial Magnet Ever Built!

[Chanakya's_Chant]

What will be the India-based Neutrino Observatory’s impact?

THE SITE: Bodi West hills at Pattipuram near Devaram in Theni district, where the Neutrino observatory will come up.​

The INO will be like a 2-inch hole made to insert a pipe through a 10-foot-high wall; it will not affect the stability of the hill​

In a landmark move, the Government of India’s Union Cabinet recently approved the India-based Neutrino Observatory project. Coming soon after the approval of the 30-metre telescope which will be located in Hawaii, this decision will cause India to step into big fundamental science. “A pioneer in the field of neutrino science, India was a world leader in 1965. In the mid-1990s, with the closing of the Kolar Gold Fields which was the site of the experiments, experimental neutrino research in India came to a halt, and the INO is expected to revive the lost advantage,” says Prof. G. Rajasekaran of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, a founder member of the INO.

The three types of neutrinos, which were initially thought to be mass-less, are now believed to have a small mass.

This was shown by observations of neutrino oscillation, which is a phenomenon by which one type of neutrino transforms into another.

There is a hierarchy among the masses of these three types of neutrino and the experiments at the INO will study this mass ordering using a magnetised iron calorimeter (ICAL). The ICAL is a massive detector which will be made of iron — 50,000 tonnes of it! The project will be housed in the 63 acres of land, about 2 km away from the settlement, in the Bodi West Hills about 100 km from Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

INO will be made of 50,000 tonnes of magnetised iron, dwarfing the 12,500-tonne magnet in the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. "It'll be the most massive magnet [ever built]," says team member M. V. N. Murthy of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

One might wonder at the need for such a massive detector and for drilling underground. The reason is that the neutrinos interact very weakly with the surroundings. We are all being washed by a stream of neutrinos every passing minute as they just pass through us without leaving a trace. Since they interact so weakly, detecting them over other interactions is impossible. We need to have a barrier of at least 1 km of earth to block out other radiation and particles, such as muons from cosmic rays. This is the reason scientists are now going underground. They will construct a tunnel at a depth of 1,300 metres below the peak and which is 2 km by 7.5m by 7.5m. This will lead to a chamber that will house the detector.

Questions have been raised as to whether this tunnel will harm the mountain. D. Indumathi, physicist and outreach co-ordinator of INO says, “This is exactly like making a 2-inch hole to insert a pipe through a 10-foot-high wall. It will not affect the stability of the hill.” About the ecological impact of the construction process, Dr, Indumathi says, “There will be hardly any disturbance after the construction period. During construction, we will take a lot of precautions and proceed in a controlled manner. Controlled blasting of the rock will last a few seconds, twice a day. At a few hundred metres from the site, this will produce a ground vibration less than 1 mm per sec.”

The members of INO had to deal with many more questions such as the effect of the construction on distant dams and the impact of the development on the villagers, and, according to her, detailed answers to questions on the impact of various aspects of the project are outlined in the INO website.

“In Idukki itself, there are more than 200 quarries, which are working without impacting the dam.

Even the Chennai Metro Rail project can dig just metres under the buildings without damaging them because of advances in technology,” she says.

While experiments around the world are being set up in the South Pole, on top of mountains and even in outer space, big basic science projects are still new in India. The INO’s project director Naba Mondal says, “This will be the largest experimental facility to come up in the country and students will get a chance to work with cutting edge technology and build sophisticated instruments.

It will be a boon for students all over the country, especially Tamil Nadu.”

For instance, S. Pethuraj, who passed out of Madurai Kamaraj University, has joined the INO’s PhD programme at TIFR, Mumbai. “Meeting the INO scientists at the university was inspiring, and the exposure I get at TIFR is of a very high level,” he says.

Source:- INO
What will be the India-based Neutrino Observatory’s impact? - The Hindu
Indian Neutrino Observatory set for construction - physicsworld.com
Indian neutrino lab to boast world's biggest magnet - physics-math - 22 October 2010 - New Scientist
India-based Neutrino Observatory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Judge]

This is great news.
IIRC there was talk of building a Hadron colidor as well in India?

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

This is great news.
IIRC there was talk of building a Hadron colidor as well in India?

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has scrapped plans to build what would have been India’s biggest particle accelerator - they can afford to pay the construction cost of Rs 2,000 crore without help from the central government. The central government is not eager to allocate funds for it anytime soon.

Scroll.in - News. Politics. Culture.

 

[Aarush]

for readers.... what is neutrino and its importance.....

Neutrinos are teeny, tiny, nearly massless particles that travel at near lightspeeds. Born from violent astrophysical events like exploding stars and gamma ray bursts, they are fantastically abundant in the universe, and can move as easily through lead as we move through air. But they are notoriously difficult to pin down.

“Neutrinos are really pretty strange particles when you get down to it,” says John Conway, a professor of physics at University of California, Davis. “They’re almost nothing at all, because they have almost no mass and no electric charge…They’re just little whisps of almost nothing.” Ghost particles, they’re often called.

But they are one of the universe’s essential ingredients, and they’ve played a role in helping scientists understand some of the most fundamental questions in physics.

For example, if you hold your hand toward the sunlight for one second, about a billion neutrinos from the sun will pass through it, says Dan Hooper, a scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. This is because they’re shot out as a byproduct of nuclear fusion from the sun – that’s the same process that produces sunlight.

“They’re important to our understanding of the kind of processes that go on in the sun, and also an important building block for the blueprint of nature,” Hooper said.

Particle physicists originally believed that neutrinos were massless. But in the 1990s, a team of Japanese scientists discovered that they actually have a smidgen of mass. This tiny bit of mass may explain why the universe is made up of matter, not antimatter. Early in the process of the Big Bang, there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter, according to Conway.

“But as the universe expanded and cooled, matter and antimatter were mostly annihilated. And a slight asymmetry favored matter over antimatter. We think neutrinos may have something to do with that process…. And it’s a puzzle, why we’re made out of matter and not antimatter.”
Studying neutrinos is difficult. They’re tough to detect since they interact so weakly with other particles. But the newly-completed IceCube Neutrino Observatory will study neutrinos inside a cubic kilometer block of ice in Antarctica. Here’s how: when the neutrinos interact with atoms inside the deep arctic ice detectors, they sometimes give off puffs of energy.

“As neutrinos pass through and interact, they produce charged particles, and the charged particles traveling through the ice give off light,” Conway said. “That’s how they’re detected. It’s like having a telescope for neutrinos underground.”

Fermilab National Laboratory has an experiment that hurls a beam of neutrinos 400 miles underground from Wisconsin to Northern Minnesota in about two milliseconds, and the lab is also planning a massive linear accelerator called Project X that will study the subatomic particles by sending them even farther.

“If 100 years ago, I told someone that the universe was filled with massless, chargeless particles with no energy, I wonder if they’d have believed you,” Conway said. “Who knows where we’ll be 100 years from now.”

What is a Neutrino...And Why Do They Matter? | The Rundown | PBS NewsHour

 

[RPK]

This Place is near to my village

 

[Agent Smith]

i've read about neutrinos and antineutrino in nuclear physics. they are massless particles and made getting passing marks in physics for me a very difficult task

 

[Chanakya's_Chant]

The 50,000 ton magnet is being designed by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre -
​

World's largest magnet in design at BARC​

The massive magnet will play a major role in the Rs 1,500-crore India-based Neutrino Observatory coming up 4,300 feet below a cave in a mountain not far from Madurai in Tamil Nadu.​

MUMBAI: Unknown to many, the world's largest magnet, weighing 50,000 tonnes, is being designed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) at Trombay these days. It will be several times bigger than the one in the Compact Muan Solenoid detector at CERN in Geneva.

The magnet will play a major role in the Rs 1,500-crore India-based Neutrino Observatory coming up 4,300 ft below a cave in a mountain not far from Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

Vivek Datar, head of Barc's nuclear physics division, told TOI on Monday that in terms of sheer dimensions the magnet being designed at the Trombay centre would be the largest in the world. "It will be iron-based, weighing 50,000 tonnes, while the weight of the one at CERN ranges between 4,000 and 5,000 tonnes." Other sources indicated the magnet's weight was 12,500 tonnes.

Datar said the current plan envisaged the magnet having three modules and work on the engineering model was expected to be completed in about three years. "We plan to do this near Madurai University," he said.

He said currently four departments at Barc were involved in the magnet project but the number would increase to six later. A formal green signal from the Atomic Energy Commission is awaited.

Naba Mondal, chief spokesperson of the observatory project at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), said the Neutrino Observatory would be a major facility relating to the area of basic sciences and would help scientists and students in fields like particle physics, astrophysics and space sciences. "This project is part of the 12th Five Year Plan of the department of atomic energy and the department of science and technology, and we have received the approval for initiating pre-project activities," he said. Mondal said if the programmes went on schedule, construction of the observatory would start in six to eight months and it should be completed by 2018.

About 100 scientists and 26 institutions are part of the Neutrino Observatory project. The institutions include Barc and TIFR, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, both in Kolkata.

Source:- World's largest magnet in design at Barc - The Times of India

i've read about neutrinos and antineutrino in nuclear physics. they are massless particles and made getting passing marks in physics for me a very difficult task

Nuclear physics is considered to be the easiest of all topics in Class XII syllabus! Toughest one is Electromagnetism.

 

[Echo_419]

The 50,000 ton magnet is being designed by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre -
​

World's largest magnet in design at BARC​

The massive magnet will play a major role in the Rs 1,500-crore India-based Neutrino Observatory coming up 4,300 feet below a cave in a mountain not far from Madurai in Tamil Nadu.​

MUMBAI: Unknown to many, the world's largest magnet, weighing 50,000 tonnes, is being designed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) at Trombay these days. It will be several times bigger than the one in the Compact Muan Solenoid detector at CERN in Geneva.

The magnet will play a major role in the Rs 1,500-crore India-based Neutrino Observatory coming up 4,300 ft below a cave in a mountain not far from Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

Vivek Datar, head of Barc's nuclear physics division, told TOI on Monday that in terms of sheer dimensions the magnet being designed at the Trombay centre would be the largest in the world. "It will be iron-based, weighing 50,000 tonnes, while the weight of the one at CERN ranges between 4,000 and 5,000 tonnes." Other sources indicated the magnet's weight was 12,500 tonnes.

Datar said the current plan envisaged the magnet having three modules and work on the engineering model was expected to be completed in about three years. "We plan to do this near Madurai University," he said.

He said currently four departments at Barc were involved in the magnet project but the number would increase to six later. A formal green signal from the Atomic Energy Commission is awaited.

Naba Mondal, chief spokesperson of the observatory project at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), said the Neutrino Observatory would be a major facility relating to the area of basic sciences and would help scientists and students in fields like particle physics, astrophysics and space sciences. "This project is part of the 12th Five Year Plan of the department of atomic energy and the department of science and technology, and we have received the approval for initiating pre-project activities," he said. Mondal said if the programmes went on schedule, construction of the observatory would start in six to eight months and it should be completed by 2018.

About 100 scientists and 26 institutions are part of the Neutrino Observatory project. The institutions include Barc and TIFR, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, both in Kolkata.

Source:- World's largest magnet in design at Barc - The Times of India



Nuclear physics is considered to be the easiest of all topics in Class XII syllabus! Toughest one is Electromagnetism.

How will this project help us & I am talking about Practical uses

 

[unbiasedopinion]

How will this project help us & I am talking about Practical uses

This is the same question I have. What is the practical use for such an investment. I am not questioning the will to do research just want to understand its use cases in practical day to day life.

 

[Echo_419]

This is the same question I have. What is the practical use for such an investment. I am not questioning the will to do research just want to understand its use cases in practical day to day life.

Same here

 

[anant_s]

How will this project help us & I am talking about Practical uses

Same here

This is the same question I have. What is the practical use for such an investment. I am not questioning the will to do research just want to understand its use cases in practical day to day life.

Sirs, practically there is little use of neutrinos atleast as of today, but study of neutrinos is one of the most important tools in cosmic sciences.
One big use is study of Super Nova explosions, where its is believed that neutrinos carry away a large amount of energy released during collapse. These energies are associated with particular energy groups and study of same can give an insight into how the explosion took place.
Since neutrinos do not interact with any other particle, they can travel long distances and are messenger of the event that happened. These can be used to form a model of predicting which star in near vicinity might be heading towards its end.
A supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS) is in operation to give warning of Super Nova events.

Super Kamiokande
Kamioka Observatory Japan Neutrino detection system (Water based) is a part of SNEWS network.

 

[Echo_419]

Sirs, practically there is little use of neutrinos atleast as of today, but study of neutrinos is one of the most important tools in cosmic sciences.
One big use is study of Super Nova explosions, where its is believed that neutrinos carry away a large amount of energy released during collapse. These energies are associated with particular energy groups and study of same can give an insight into how the explosion took place.
Since neutrinos do not interact with any other particle, they can travel long distances and are messenger of the event that happened. These can be used to form a model of predicting which star in near vicinity might be heading towards its end.
A supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS) is in operation to give warning of Super Nova events.

View attachment 182505
Super Kamiokande
Kamioka Observatory Japan Neutrino detection system (Water based) is a part of SNEWS network.

In short useless in short,medium & Long term but useful in Long-Long term

 

[anant_s]

In short useless in short,medium & Long term but useful in Long-Long term

When such high end research program happens we usually get to see several spin offs that percolate down or manifest as technologies useful for common person. Who knows detection of such particles will allow us to have a better understanding of how nucleus of an element behaves which may lead to development of smart alloys, super-conductivity...
But yes that isn't happening over-night.

 

[Echo_419]

When such high end research program happens we usually get to see several spin offs that percolate down or manifest as technologies useful for common person. Who knows detection of such particles will allow us to have a better understanding of how nucleus of an element behaves which may lead to development of smart alloys, super-conductivity...
But yes that isn't happening over-night.

About spin offs you are right let's hope we the project gets completed fast

 

[surya kiran]

@Echo_419 @unbiasedopinion @anant_s

In a major step for truly wireless communications, scientists have figured out how to send a message with neutrinos, transmitting a single word through 780 feet of bedrock and translating it at the other end. It's just a first step, but the message suggests that someday, submarine crews and maybe average civilians will communicate by sending chargeless, ghostly particles through any obstacle. The message? "Neutrino."

For the First Time, a Message Sent With Neutrinos | Popular Science