India Becomes Associate Member Of CERN, The World’s Largest Particle Physics Lab

On Monday (21 November), India and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) signed an agreement that makes India an associate member state of the organisation. CERN is responsible for operating the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.

The agreement was signed by Sekhar Basu, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy and Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director General in Mumbai.

Based in Geneva on the French-Swiss border, CERN is the world's largest nuclear and particle physics laboratory, where scientists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe with the help of the most sophisticated scientific instruments and advanced computing systems.

India has made significant contributions to the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the areas of design, development and supply of hardware accelerator components or systems and its commissioning and software development and deployment in the machine.

The discovery of the Higgs Boson at the LHC is the most talked-about scientific discovery in recent memory. Indian scientists have played a significant role in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments, which is one of the two large experiments that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson. They have been named as part of this historic discovery.

With inputs from IANS