Hyderabad: Hyderabad will join an international effort to unravel the mystery behind the evolution of the universe. On Saturday, two years after an agreement was signed, ECIL Hyderabad will be handing over ultra stable power converters to become part of the Facility for Anti Proton and Ion Research (FAIR) — on the lines of the CERN accelerator in Geneva— in Germany.
According to the scientists FAIR will reveal consolidated findings about unknown states of matter and the still missing information about the evolution of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.
India will be contributing around Euro 36 million (Rs 270 crore) in the form of high technology equipment for the FAIR programme. India will supply detectors, vacuum chambers, magnets and power converters. The cost of the converters was Euro 9 million (about Rs 67 crore).
ECIL senior deputy general manager A. Chiranjeevi Rao said, “We are all set to flag off its first consignment of ultra stable power converters to Germany on Saturday.” He said Bhabha Atomic Research Centre director K.N. Vyas would flag off the “critical high technology equipment” at ECIL Hyderabad.
FAIR is coming up at Darmstadt near Frankfurt in Germany to study the building blocks of matter and the evolution of the universe.
“This is a highly sophisticated accelerator complex which will provide high-energy, precisely-tailored beams of anti-protons and many kinds of ions at unprecedented quality and intensities. These charged particle beams will be accelerated and employed to create new, often highly exotic particles in a series of parallel experimental programmes,” said Mr Chiranjeevi Rao.
Scientists from Austria, China, Finland, France, Germany, Britain, Gree-ce, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Slova-kia, Spain and Sweden are participating in the experiments.
ECIL is involved in the design, development, manufacturing and supply of ultra stable power converters. The research and development organisations of the department of atomic energy like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, and Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata, are providing technical support to ECIL for the power converters.
The converters comply with European standards. They range in power rating up to 150 kilowatts. They will power the normal and super conducting magnets that accelerate and bend the high energy particle beams.
FAIR engineers and officials who visited ECIL last month conducted factory acceptance tests and certified and cleared the equipment for shipment to Germany.
