Science is a body of organized knowledge based onexperiment, observation and inference. It has completely changed our outlookand has placed the magic lamp of Alladin in the hands of man. Science has sufficiently surpassed thefulfillment of human necessities and has supplemented them with luxuries. Thisamazing ease in life and living is the outcome of the great difficultiesundertaken by its heroes battling in their labs, who often go unknown, unheard,unsung and unwept.
Now the onus lieswith the socio-political institutions to trickle down the scientific treasuresto the grass root level.
Back in our quest, we are now in dire need of doing morescience for science than for any other agenda. Given all efforts of mankind, wehave still not known even an iota of the universe we live in. The slow progressin making scientific accomplishments is on account of many factors ranging frompolitical and geographical to intellectual verification. Every theory has toface the axe of the experiment to be fitted as a fact, to the extent that evena stalwart like Stephen Hawking had to discard his black-hole theories morefrequently than he had proposed them.
Science is the child of curiosity, therefore no wonder thatthe first ever facebook post of Hawking read as, “Be curious, I know I am’.
One such great curiosity of the present times is that of the neutrinos. Hypothesized by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles which make up the universe. But these remain among the most mysterious particles and also one of the least understood. Having been born barely one second after the big bang, neutrinos are very shy and harmless particles.
These are similar to the more familiar electron, with one crucial difference of not carrying electric charge. Because neutrinos are electrically neutral, these are not affected by the electromagnetic forces which act on electrons. Neutrinos are affected only by a “weak” sub-atomic force of much shorter range than electromagnetism, and are therefore able to pass through great distances in matter, say the entire earth, practically unimpeded.
If neutrinos have mass, then these also interact gravitationally with other massive particles. Pinning down the exact masses and understanding the mechanisms by which neutrino masses are generated are among the most interesting questions in the field of particle physics today. Many experiments are underway, or are being planned, expressly to answer these questions.
Neutrinos have been beautifully described by John Updike inthe following poem
Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dust maids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall.
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed – you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
John Updike
Telephone Poles and Other Poems
1963
Surprisingly, the information about these extremely lightparticles is also imprinted on the largest cosmological scales of the Universethat we can observe. This is because neutrinos, by number, are the second mostabundant particles in the Universe, with their number density being onlyslightly lower than that of photons. I amrecalled of a top ISRO scientist Mr. Subhan khan Pathan, who unfortunatelypassed away during a Kashmir University function in September 2011. His lastwords had thrown a direct hint that everything in the world in a few decadesfrom now may prove to be neutrinos only. These large number densities mean thatneutrinos make up a non-negligible fraction of the total energy density of theUniverse. With advances in simulations, as well as the accuracy of cosmologicalsurveys, weighing neutrinos from their impact on the largest structures in theUniverse will soon be possible. In fact, there is a real chance that theneutrino mass measurements from cosmology will be able to pin down the exactmasses before any terrestrial experiment does it.
So far, the Neutrino Physics has bagged four Nobel Prizesalmost in succession and is one of the most thrilling adventures being pursuedin the scientific world community. Of late, the Government of India has alsosanctioned Indian Neutrino Observatory, INO project in 2015 as its biggestcurrent scientific endeavor. Experts say that the project, once established,could be as famous as CERN’s particle physics lab.