Indian Neutrino Observatory Will House the World's Biggest Magnet

By Dan Nosowitz Posted 10.25.2010 at 2:46 pm 7 Comments

The Future Site The India Neutrino Observatory will be built two kilometers under this hill in southeastern India. India Neutrino Observatory

India's Ministry of Environment and Forests just approved the building of the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO) in the Bodi West Hills, located in Tamil Nadu. The INO is a ridiculously ambitious project that dwarfs CERN, requiring 50,000 tons of magnetized iron to study neutrinos.

Neutrinos are the elusive miniscule particles that are able to travel at tremendous speeds and pass through ordinary matter undetected, which of course makes it hard as hell to detect them. Scientists have previously built giant machines to attempt to study them, and proposed such goofy ideas as using the moon as a tester. But the INO might be the most impressive of all.

First discussed in 1989, the INO was shuffled around due to a lack of resources (including a lack of trained physicists) and opposition from environmental groups (the original site was next to a tiger preserve). But a new program to train physicists was set up, the site was moved to southeastern India, and now the plans have secured approval from the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The INO will use that huge amount of iron, layered in sheets, as the passive material, with about 30,000 neutrino detectors -- glass resistive plate chambers -- sandwiched in between the sheets. The lab hopes to measure, study, and examine neutrinos beamed from CERN or Fermilab (distance and mass in between the labs not really being an issue for neutrinos). Their main goal is to study the tendency of neutrinos to oscillate between their three forms--electron, muon, and tau--which is, at this point, mostly theoretical. There are some proposals that involve communication via neutrino but study is needed to figure out exactly what these things are and how they work.

[New Scientist]

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7 Comments

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kidkaboom22

10/25/10 at 3:53 pm

Thank you India conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this.Just like how they thought and still think the LHC was created to make black holes and stargates lol.

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FrogOutOfaWell

10/25/10 at 11:24 pm

But why a cash stripped country is investing in such a huge project...
LHC and INO look like social work for societies to progress in science and as we know about this world no body invests unless and until there is a huge profit...
so is there a hidden profit which they dont want to disclose now???

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speedoflight

10/26/10 at 6:04 am

Awsome India and thank you

If we are to take a next step in space aviation, excellent communication is really important. Neutrinos could be it. pass through anything. Little tiny Neutrino robots that send us data from a harsh environment in space.

I am getting ahead of myself.

1 BILLION POPULATION, ANCIENT SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTS THAT SCIENCE IS JUST CATCHING UP WITH, SMART PEOPLE (like BOSH), something good should come out of this.

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MaxHubert

from montreal, quebec

10/26/10 at 8:46 am

A tiger preserve ???? lol

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dustmuster

10/27/10 at 9:38 pm

Yea - Tamil Nadu - a lot of high tech stuff going on there - I think they still urinate in the streets.

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padiyar83

11/01/10 at 8:32 pm

Dustmuster Tamil Nadu is home to one of the worlds best pool of engineers, believe it or not they have a whopping 454 engineering colleges, even you agree its a lot for a state roughly the size of Louisiana. These days its hard to find a fortune 500 that does not have a presence in this state (and we keep guessing why are the fortune 500's not hiring in the US). If you have ever heard of Raman effect, it is attributed to Physicist CV Raman who was educated in Tamil Nadu.

I agree they still urinate in the streets, but where they urinate has nothing to do with engineering physics and math skills which they excel in. Don't believe me, try it :)

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eugenius

04/06/11 at 4:53 pm

Jainism contributions to Indian culture: While Jains represent less than 1% of the Indian population, their contributions to culture and society in India are significant. Jainism had a major influence in developing a system of philosophy, Scholarly research and ethics that had a great impact on all aspects of Indian culture.

Jains have also contributed to the culture and language of the Indian states Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Tamil Nadu is the eleventh largest state in India by area (about the size of Greece) and the seventh most populous state. It is the fifth largest contributor to India's GDP and ranks tenth in Human Development Index as of 2006.

Tamil Nadu is also the most urbanised state in India. The state has the highest number (10.56%) of business enterprises and stands second in total employment (9.97%) in India, compared to the population share of about 6%.

Though the Jains form only 0.42% of the population of India, their contribution to the exchequer by way of income tax is an astounding 24% of the total tax collected.
Jains encourage their followers to do research and obtain higher education.