The central government is planning to set up a Neutrino Observatory in the country. This was informed by the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge), Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh on September 21, 2020 in a written reply in the lower house of the Parliament, Lok Sabha.
The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) will be a world-class underground laboratory with a rock cover that will study the neutrinos produced in the atmosphere of the Earth.
Objective |
| The observation will help researchers understand more about the properties of neutrino particles, whose main source is the Sun and the Earth's atmosphere. |
The INO Project will include:
• Construction of an underground laboratory and associated surface facilities at Bodi West Hills in the Theni district, Tamil Nadu. The underground laboratory will comprise a large cavern of size 132m X 26m X 20m and several smaller caverns. The approach to the caverns will be by a 2100 m long and 7.5 m wide tunnel.
• The construction of a magnetized Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) detector to study neutrinos. The calorimeter, the heaviest one made by any country, will consist of 50000 tons of magnetized iron plates arranged in stacks with gaps in between where Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) would be inserted as active detectors.
• Establishment of an Inter-Institutional Centre for High Energy Physics (IICHEP) at Madurai. The institute will provide support in maintenance and operation of the underground laboratory, detector research and development and for human resource development.
Why is the INO laboratory important?
• One of the most important open problems in physics today is the determination of neutrino masses and mixing parameters. Though neutrinos are found in abundance, their weak interacting nature makes studying these particles in a laboratory extremely difficult.
• The ICAL detector is designed to address some of these key problems in a unique way. It will detect the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos over a wide range of energies and path lengths.
• The key focus of the project is to explore the Earth's matter effect by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range.
• Over the years, the underground laboratory is expected to develop into a full-fledged underground science laboratory for other studies in physics, biology, geology and hydrology.
Neutrinos: All you need to know! |
What are Neutrinos?• Neutrinos are tiny elementary particles like the electron but not part of the Atom. An elementary particle is one that cannot be broken into further smaller pieces. • Overall, they come in three flavours, one similar to electrons and the other two that are heavier than an electron-Muon (200 times heavier than an electron) and Tau (3500 times heavier than the electron). • Each of these three particles has a neutrino partner called the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. • While the electron, muon and the tau are all negatively charged particles, all the neutrinos are chargeless or neutral and are almost massless. • The group of these six particles is known as leptons. According to recent experiments, these charge-neutral fundamental particles, have a finite but small mass which is unknown. Where are Neutrinos found?The Neutrinos are abundantly found in nature. The Sun, stars and the atmosphere produce millions of neutrinos every second and most of these neutrinos pass through our body without us realising. They can even pass through the earth and come out on the other side because they interact very less with anything that comes in their path. |
Background
The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is a multi-institutional collaboration and one of the biggest experimental particle physics projects undertaken in India. The particle physics research project is anticipated to provide a precise measurement of neutrino mixing parameters. The project will be jointly funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the Government of India.
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