High school students have a lot to know about the universe, not only from the days of the “Big Bang”, but also the latest discoveries in space science and research. The Regional Science Centre in Tirupati, administered by the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), has opened a new gallery titled “Our Universe” for the benefit of students.
The gallery has a huge exhibit on the “Large Hadron Collider” (LHC), the world's largest and powerful particle accelerator situated at a depth of 50-175 m beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
Walk by
The curved replica partly represents the inside of the collider, into which students can walk and see for themselves the apparatus that facilitates the collision. This collider seeks to rediscover the standard model and determine what breaks the electroweak symmetry, besides searching for new forces of nature.
The exhibit also unravels the mystery behind “Anti-Matter”, the equal and opposite facet of matter. According to NCSM Director-General G.S. Rautela, the LHC experiment has left indications that Einstein's theory may be proved wrong, as the particles that collided in the LHC had speeds higher than light. “Even the long-awaited ‘God' particle may see light as a result of the series of experiments”, he quips.
With the help of portraits and bust-size images, an exhibit eulogises the Indian astronomers Varahamihira (505-587AD), Aryabhatta (476-550CE) and American scientist Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953), who discovered the existence of other galaxies other than our Milky Way. Another exhibit shows how many particles are present in a human body, just by taking his/her weight into account.
“The gallery offers knowledge on the basics, which will surely help the students get a thorough upgrade on astronomy and space research”, explains the centre's project coordinator K.Madan Gopal.
Published - February 27, 2012 06:52 pm IST
