After crossing several hurdles, which seemed insurmountable, India is now all set to gain associate membership of CERN, writes Bikash Sinha
The CERN is the most extraordinary and unique accelerator in the world. It is a fusion of the best of engineering and world-class science, physics in particular. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology and Stanford are a few of its kind.
The CERN was created in 1954, almost immediately after World War II. The countries that had fought with one another bitterly, Germany in particular, formed a group which later become CERN. Existing laboratories or institutions in the so-called conservative world vehemently disagreed because of the unprecedented liberal concept of CERN.
Anyway, there were also the unorthodox, almost revolutionary, types. John Adams shifted to CERN from the United Kingdom and built the Super Proton Synchrotron, the workhorse at that time which was at the centre of many pioneering experiments. It is used even now, although not for great discoveries but for an essential input. For example, the SPS injects ions, particularly to the ring, leading to the Large Hadron Collider, which produced Higgs Boson.
I think it is fair to say that the SPS was the take-off point of CERN. Many major discoveries were made of fundamental particles, which are now part of textbooks, if not folklore.
The CERN in Europe suddenly became a centre of international high energy physics. The energy since the early days of the SPS has gone up - from millions of electron volts in the beginning to trillion electron volts over the years.
But, of course, any institution's one- time achievement does not make history. Sustained effort over the years with great discoveries makes it immortal; with CERN there are many such examples - the discovery of W and Z bosons, among others.
With the SPS in place, it is high-powered technology, such as high-speed electronics, very fast computer network, very high voltage power supply and so on that had to be discovered.
On the other side of the Atlantic, large-scale industries started floating large boilers, furnace and so on. With the famous SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, with its very accurate style of detector building, achieving accuracy of high order became the norm. A ruthless game of 'discovering fundamental particles' started between Europe and the United States of America. It was complementary most of the time but also highly competitive.
The CERN council, meanwhile, became a powerful body in the world scale. It decided CERN's foreign policy, the experiments to perform, the countries which should participate - in fact, in my opinion, almost everything concerning the modern era of high-energy physics.
I came to CERN in 1988-89 with two of my colleagues, Sibaji Raha and Bhaskar Dutta, seeking possibilities of doing experiments with our ideas, a tall order at CERN in those days. Hans H. Gutbrod came from Germany, Raha and I came from Calcutta while Dutta was from Bangalore.
Gutbrod was sympathetic but he wondered whether we fit into this group from the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Germany. I recall arguing with him fiercely, although we realized that all the important European languages were spoken - French, German and a little English - and so it was multilingual.
But Raha and I had physics ideas which the German group did not quite grasp - we wanted to find out the source of light from the now proposed matter called the quark-gluon plasma, which is formed under enormous pressure and/or heat when two nuclei collide at CERN SPS, for example. First, the neutron and proton melt with that high temperature/pressure. Then the quarks and gluons appear in small volume, and are usually referred to as the quark-gluon plasma.
Gutbrod designed the Photon Multiplicity Detector, where the photons coming out of quark, anti-quark annihilation and quark-gluon interaction are to be detected. He already had enormous experience of this kind of experiment at Berkeley, in the United States of America.
It was a grand success. It is fair to say that the PMD was one of the very first detectors to have discovered the QGP. But, of course, this happened under a huge cloud of controversy. The experiment was done at the SPS, CERN by shooting sulphur ion on gold. The results clearly show that by invoking QGP, the data can be clearly explained. Our work was greatly appreciated both in Europe and the US.
Although we were working inside CERN, we still remained really outside. We were given a mere 'observer' status - we could not comment, could not vote, we could only observe.
The more involved we got with CERN experiments, the more dependent we became on the CERN administration; it becomes almost impossible to do things smoothly without a formal contract with CERN authorities. I knew this well. The enormous amount of bottleneck in administration takes away the beauty, elegance and mystery of science - all this seems to be quite irrelevant in India.
The entire process to set up a fast track large-scale experiment is next to impossible, according to officials. One high official once asked me why we need a detector while the accelerator is still being built. There was a detectable and sharp difference in this respect between a member state and a non-member state such as India.
Our own government was not very forthcoming, unfortunately. What good will experiments bring to India? We must do our experiments in our own land, with our own hands and prove ourselves to the world - this argument forgets that science is not a domestic but a global affair. What good if India becomes an 'associate member' (instead of remaining just an observer)? How useful is it to India's economic programme?
So, after lot of negotiation and tiresome travel between CERN and India, the process to make India an associate member started. Pakistan has already become one. One lady from a reputed Indian institution was so agitated at the idea of associate membership that the then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission was quite rattled. India formally becomes a full associate member at the end of June.
What does it mean to become an associate member? How much does it cost? It costs 64 crore approximately, per annum. Associate membership means that we have voting rights on any policy and/or experiments. We can propose independently any experiment with other colleagues in the world. Most important, we can bid for any project advertised by CERN and even create complex buildings. I would love to say that big houses of India can earn millions of dollars worth of work at a relatively cheap rate - bricks are a lot cheaper in India.
With the membership, India will have access to advanced technologies, as we have had while doing experiments at the LHC, especially.
As we formally become associate member in June, there must be intense preparation to embrace the new status. But in India, who is going to overcome inertia? Energy is there but it is not quite visible.
Indians now can get jobs at CERN -which was not possible before.
This is a golden opportunity for India to take a quantum leap in the world of accelerator market.
India has always been the best when the call comes. India must prove itself now.
If you belong to CERN/ Long or short/ It's a lot of fun!/ For short, it's like a ménage à trois/ For long, it's a banquet/ Anyhow, it's a lot of fun. // It's a lot of fun, if you are in CERN/ You become a Nobel like Carlo Rubbia/ Or you become a great chef in the canteen/ A lot of fun!/ To become a Nobel at CERN. // It is not horrible,/ You start your life at 6 in the morning/ You end your day at 10 pm, after sandwich/ Then go for a cognac at Charlie's Bar. // As I said,/ To be at CERN/ It's a lot of fun!
PS: Associate membership was approved by the council of CERN on June 16, 2016 - a great achievement and a great relief.
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