University of Hyderabad in spotlight after LHC bags ‘science Oscar'
At the heart of this international collaboration is the team led by Dr Bhawna Gomber at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Electronics Science and Technology, School of Physics. Her group made significant contributions to the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, one of the flagship detectors at the LHC.
Explaining CMS's role within the LHC, Dr Bhawna Gomber told TNIE, 'CMS is a general-purpose detector, playing a crucial role in probing both standard model phenomena and physics beyond the Standard Model. In fact, both CMS and its counterpart ATLAS confirmed the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.'
She added, 'Our team is involved in both physics analysis—particularly the search for dark matter using proton-proton collision data — and the development of firmware for the calorimeter trigger system, as part of the detector's Phase-2 upgrade.'
The group's work spans cutting-edge domains including data analysis, trigger electronics, and high-energy particle interactions, contributing significantly to the success of the CMS project.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
5 days ago
- NDTV
KBC 17: Contestant Takes Home Rs 5 Lakh After Getting A Rs 12.50 Lakh Question Wrong. Do You Know The Right Answer?
Amitabh Bachchan is back for Kaun Banega Crorepati season 17. The quiz-based reality show premiered on Monday, August 11, on Sony TV and is also available to watch on the OTT platform SonyLIV. The second episode saw contestant Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax from Balia, Uttar Pradesh, take the hot seat. After successfully answering 11 questions, he was unable to give the correct answer for the 12th question which could have earned him Rs 12.50 lakh. The question was, "Which award, founded by tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin, is nicknamed the 'Oscars of Science'?" The four options were - A) Edison Prize, B) Breakthrough Prize, C) Millennium Prize and D) Eureka Award. Since the contestant did not have any lifelines left, he took a risk and picked Option C) Millennium, which turned out to be incorrect. After losing the Rs 12.50 lakh question, the participant went home with a prize money of Rs 5 lakh. The correct answer to the question was Option B -- Breakthrough Prize. FYI: The Breakthrough Prize, established in 2013, is an annual award that recognises outstanding achievements and contributions of scientists in fundamental physics, life sciences, and mathematics. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, former Google chief Sergey Brin, genomics company 23&Me founder Anne Wojcicki, and tech investor couple Yuri and Julia Milner. This year, the Breakthrough Prize ceremony was held in Santa Monica, California, in April. The event saw the attendance of prominent figures, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jodie Foster and Zoe Saldana, to name a few. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were also present. Coming to KBC 17, the first contestant of this season, Manavpreet Singh decided to quit the game after winning Rs 25 lakh. The reason was that he did not know the answer to this question: "To which South American author did Rabindranath Tagore dedicate his poetry collection Purabi?" The options were as follows: A) Gabriela Mistral, B) Victoria Ocampo, C) Maria Luisa Bombal, D) Teresa de la Parra. Read all about it here.
The Hindu
5 days ago
- The Hindu
Latest muon data narrows gap but leaves physics mysteries unresolved
Can you weigh an elephant before and after it picks up a one-rupee coin, and tell the difference? You can if the measurement is precise. To detect a 4-gram coin on a 4-tonne creature, the scales must come with a resolution of at least 1 part per million (ppm). Precise measurements such as these routinely lead to startling discoveries in fundamental physics. This is what the physicist Albert Michelson meant by 'The future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals'. This June, the Muon g-2 (pronounced 'gee minus two') Experiment at Fermilab in the US presented its highly anticipated final results. With data collected over three years and with the involvement of more than 170 physicists, the collaboration had measured a unique property of a subatomic particle called a muon with an unprecedented precision of 0.127 ppm, outdoing its stated goal of 0.140 ppm. Usually, physicists check such measurements against the prediction of the Standard Model, the theory of subatomic particles that predicts their properties. If they don't match, the measured value would hint at the presence of unseen forces. But in this instance, there are two ways to make theoretical predictions about this property of the muon. One of them is consistent with the Fermilab experiment and the other is far off. Nobody knows which really is right, and an intriguing drama has been unfolding over the last few years with no clear resolution in sight. g minus 2 The muon is an elementary particle that mimics the electron in every trait except for being 207-times heavier. Discovered in 1936 in cosmic rays, its place in the pattern of the Standard Model was, and still is, something of a mystery, prompting physicist Isidor Rabi to remark: 'Who ordered that?' The muon carries non-zero quantum spin, which means it functions like a petite magnet. The strength of this magnet, called the magnetic moment, is captured by a quantity called the g factor. In a high-school calculation, g would be exactly 2, but in advanced theory its value drifts a tiny bit from 2 due to quantum field effects. It is this so-called anomalous magnetic moment that the Muon g -2 Experiment painstakingly ascertained. Measurements of the g-2 of the muon were first made at CERN in Europe and the results were published in 1961 with a definition of 4000 ppm. Over the next two decades at CERN, the precision was improved to 7 ppm. Matters took an interesting trans-Atlantic turn when the Muon E821 experiment at the Brookhaven National Lab in the US took data between 1997 and 2001 and achieved a precision of 0.540 ppm, which was similar to the uncertainty in the theoretical prediction. In other words, the two numbers — the theoretical calculation and the observed value — could be meaningfully compared. And lo and behold, they significantly disagreed. Contrast with theory Nothing seemed to have been amiss in the experiment, so many physicists wagered that the disagreement was a hint of 'new physics'. Numerous explanations involving theories beyond the Standard Model poured into the literature over the next two decades. At the same time, the theoretical physicists themselves got down to refining the Standard Model prediction itself, which was no mean task. So stood affairs until Fermilab started measuring g-2 in 2017. When it had collected just 6% of the total intended data by 2021, it had already reached a precision of 0.460 ppm, comparable to E821. This first result was in such excellent agreement with E821 data that when the two results were combined, the discrepancy with theory deepened to worrying levels. But the spectacle didn't end there. On the very day that Fermilab announced this result to much fanfare, there quietly appeared in Nature a new paper in which a group of physicists, called the Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal (BMW) Lattice collaboration, argued there may be no gap between theory and experiment values after all. Theorists compute the muon g-2 using either (i) Feynman diagrams, a tool that has served calculations in quantum field theory for three quarters of a century, or (ii) the so-called lattice, a supercomputer simulation of spacetime as a discretised grid that represents quantum fields. Both approaches are technically very challenging in this context. The final results at Fermilab from June are less confusing. They are consistent with their past announcements; it's their contrast with theory that is unsettled. An old friend The experimental setup itself was ingenious. A beam of anti-muons is injected into a 15-m-wise ring with a uniform magnetic field. There the antiparticles make circular orbits with a characteristic frequency. Meanwhile, the antiparticles' spin vectors — a fundamental property of theirs — rotate in the magnetic field and they resemble spinning tops, spinning with a certain spin frequency. The central conceit is to measure the difference between the frequency of the circular orbits and the spin frequencies. This difference carries direct information on the muon's g-2 value. Both E821 and Fermilab operated on this principle. This is not impossible. Fermilab reused part of the E821 equipment and thus some unknown defects may have made their presence felt in the Fermilab data as well. This is why it is crucial to have a completely independent measurement by a different experimental approach. An upcoming effort at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex will do just this. Uncertainty is an old friend of fundamental physics. It has always borne the promise of an imminent disclosure of a deep secret of nature. We wait now for the next word from theorists and hope that the jury will soon be in. Nirmal Raj is an assistant professor of theoretical physics at the Centre for High Energy Physics in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.
NDTV
07-08-2025
- NDTV
China Conducts First Test Of Manned Lunar Lander 'Lanyue'
China conducted its first test on Wednesday of a lunar lander that it hopes will put the first Chinese on the moon before 2030, the country's manned space program said. The lander's ascent and descent systems underwent comprehensive verification at a site in Hebei province that was designed to simulate the moon's surface. The test surface had a special coating to mimic lunar soil reflectivity, as well as being covered with rocks and craters. "The test involved multiple operational conditions, a lengthy testing period, and high technical complexity, making it a critical milestone in the development of China's manned lunar exploration program," China Manned Space (CMS) said in a statement posted on its website on Thursday. The lunar lander, known as Lanyue, which means "embrace the moon" in Mandarin, will be used to transport astronauts between the lunar orbit and the moon's surface, as well as serving as a living space, power source, and data centre after they land on the moon, CMS added. China has kept details closely guarded about its programme to achieve a manned landing on the moon, but the disclosure about the test comes at a time when the United States is looking to stave off the rapid advances of China's space program. NASA plans for its Artemis programme to send astronauts around the moon and back in April 2026, with a subsequent moon landing mission a year later. China's uncrewed missions to the moon in the past five years have allowed the country to become the only nation to retrieve lunar samples from both the near and far sides of the moon. Those missions have drawn interest from the European Space Agency, NASA-funded universities, and national space agencies from Pakistan to Thailand. A successful manned landing before 2030 would boost China's plans to build a "basic model" of the International Lunar Research Station by 2035. This manned base, led by China and Russia, would include a nuclear reactor on the moon's surface as a power source.
