Posted on 05/07/2005 8:28:33 AM PDT by The Incredible One
KOLKATA: In a major leap for India's nuclear research, scientists here have reached the advanced stage of constructing a superconducting cyclotron that could break the monopoly of the West in the field.
To be operational in two years, this powerful cyclotron being developed at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC) here, namely K500, would be the seventh of its kind in the world.
There are three such cyclotrons in the US, one in Canada, one in Italy and one in the Netherlands.
"K500 would be indigenous and three times more powerful than the existing cyclotron here operational since 1980.
"It will be used by our scientists for carrying out highly advanced research experiments in nuclear science," the centre's director Bikash Sinha said.
"The majority of components were fabricated in the country and some of them, including the superconducting coil, at the VECC itself."
There have been some very sharp Indian physicists and mathmaticians. It's perfectly possible that in a few decades, India will have as good - and as original - a technology as the West.
What energy range? How large a magnetic field? Beam intensity? Not a syncrotron?
No idea and it really doesn't matter; the Indians are starting something they have every chance of turning into an open-ended process, so energy range etc. will eventually be whatever they want them to be.
Then maybe they will reach the same dead end that most have reached after building these things.
<< There have been some very sharp Indian physicists and mathmaticians. It's perfectly possible that in a few decades, India will have as good - and as original - a technology as the West. >>
Perfectly possible?
Very possible, indeed.
And absolutely certain that in the meanwhile the West -- and particularly America -- will have better and even more inovative technology than we can yet even begin to imagine.
BUMPping
So who's leading the world in colliders? It looks like America is losing its former leadership, and Europe is taking over. Now we read that India is developing its own equipment.
What are we doing about it?
Mostly Republicans killed our super collider project in 1993. As "vanesch" in that link said:
The Killing of the Superconducting SupercolliderNotice that Amdt. 983 to H.R. 2445 (Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 1994) kills the super-collider project.
The Democrats are generally seen as pro-science, who want to shell in big bucks for research. And of coure, superconducting supercollider has little to do with defeating communism at this point so I'd expect the Republicans to vote against it. Still... I'm soo confused...
I think the killing of the SSC was somehow sad but justified. The management of the project went completely wrong, and if I remember well, it had already spend 4 times the initial planned budget when it was 1/4 through the project. Even though I'm a particle physicist, and even though I think that the SSC was a great idea which was sad to close down, I can fully understand that when a project is approved, and it is slowly turning out that it will cost about 20 times more than initially proposed, you get the door on your nose.
Now notice who voted against it in the greatest numbers: Republicans.
Peter Woit, a Mathematics prof at Columbia, writes:
The only plan on the table for the US to get back into the high energy accelerator business is the International Linear Collider (ILC), but the question of how such a machine would be financed, and whether it would even be constructed in the US at all, remains up in the air. In a very real sense, the future of experimental high energy physics in the US after 2010 is a very large question mark.He's reacting to this article which I found summarized:
Monday, 7 February, was a grim day for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). "You wake up, you go to a presentation, and you find out you're dead," says Fermilab physicist Joel Butler. Butler is co-spokesperson of an experiment known as BTeV--a multimillion-dollar project that would allow scientists to study the properties of the bottom quark. But that Monday, when the new Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman took to the podium to announce the department's budget request for 2006, BTeV scientists were horrified to discover that their project had been canceled. -- High-Energy Physics: Exit America?Leadership in science requires commitment and determination. We had it in the mid-20th century. It looks like we're losing it to me, and I don't see Republicans stepping up to the challenge of reversing the trend.
So far, Republican leadership in physics and space exploration has been weak. I was optimistic about it after President Bush's early speeches after taking office, but where are the results?
Forget leadership in physics. With the way things are going we will be lucky to get classes that teach Darwin. Bigotry from the Christian Right is one of the biggest threats facing science today!!!
To confuse "science" with the feral gummint's squandering of the confiscated wealth of America's [Of the world's, that is] most creative, innovative, industrious and productive Men, is but to measure how far we have travelled down fasciSSocialism's dead-end track!
And that don't take no [Feral and/or any other gummint doled] "scientist" to figger!
And as for the bigotted remarks in one of your posts about the "Christian Right" and Charley Darwin and his theories, it don't take no great intellect, neither, to note that, in all of its recorded history, Mankind has never seen such scientific, productive, industrious, innovative, creativity, musical and every other form of artistic expression -- and every other and/or every other kind of progress -- than it witnessed when this Christian Nation was unequivocal about its Christianity.
And "scientists" either done book larned the kids down the village school or worked for private employers, who either witnessed their progress and measured their usefulness -- or sacked them!
I'm not convinced that the issue with evolution is as critical as the things we can do directly with science like space exploration, enticing students into engineering, and research like this. I realize the "scientific method" is an important concern for you, but biology and genetics research "in the present" is just as interesting as the study of origins, if not more. I'm just trying to point out that not so much is lost just because some fundamentalist Christians want to undermine an objective scientific approach to the origin of the species.
I don't see anything in your comments that could help us compete with India and Europe on ground breaking physics research.
Indianapolis Raceway, Daytona Speedway, and Churchill Downs to name a few.
They understood that just fine. Yea meant kill the collider. That's what's bothering them. I see a lot of Republicans voting Yea.
Bigoted is better than dumb. So I win against you.
That's unfair. Evolution isn't something that one needs to "believe." (Nothing in science should require belief in anything.) It's a very minor issue, in fact, as to whether or not evolution applies to our development. One can study much about biology and never even worry about that question. Physics, chemistry, and astronomy -- the issues related to this thread -- do not require faith in evolution or faith in God to study.
The Republican disinterest in this project has nothing to do with religion. It has more to do with budget strategies and pork. It has a lot to do with junk spending the Democrats are sapping our government with. And it has a lot to do with how the State Department spends our tax dollars overseas. There just isn't enough left over for real challenging projects like these that could propel America forward into the lead again in physics.
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