Institutes in Kolkata put on an LHC carnival
The start-up of the LHC in September 2008, preceded by media hype about the impending disaster of black holes "gobbling up" everything, made the LHC a glamorous and exciting phenomenon in contemporary science. It fuelled the curiosity of people from all sections of society, in India, as in many other parts of the world.
Triggered by this explosion of popular interest, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC) and the neighbouring Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) organized an LHC outreach programme earlier this year. On "Science day", about a thousand excited and enthusiastic young students from high schools and graduate-degree courses from all over the state of West Bengal came to participate in "Understanding the universe through the Large Hadron Collider". The main hall of the auditorium could not accommodate all of the young visitors, so a video telecast was arranged outside the hall.
Premomoy Ghosh started the programme with an introduction, followed by a simple pedagogical presentation by Bikash Sinha, who explained the magic of little bangs and the big bang. Pijushpani Bhattacharjee and Jan-e Alam then elaborated on the astrophysics and cosmology of quark-gluon plasma. Tapan Nayak gave a lively video presentation that explained the experiments at LHC. To conclude the event, Abhee Kanti Dutta-Majumdar anchored a question-and-answer session, which was a huge success, and a vote of thanks was given by Dinesh Srivastava. The outreach programme also included an exhibition featuring scale models and posters.
The visiting students said that they felt as though they had been physically transported to CERN, and the excitement was obvious on their faces. It had been an overwhelmingly successful science carnival.
Milan dedicates square to Giuseppe Occhialini
Giuseppe Occhialini, known as "Beppo" to his friends and to the older generation of physicists, spent more than half of his life as a scientist living in Milan. To honour and remember his presence, the physicists of the physics department of the Università Statale di Milano took the initiative to ask the town authorities to give Beppo's name to a square located in the Città degli Studi. The proposal was promptly seconded by the physics department of the Università Statale Della Bicocca, the Milanese university established 10 years ago, where the physics department is named after Occhialini.
The approval from the mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, came during the symposium on "Highlights in today's physics", which was held in Milan in 2007 to celebrate the centenary of Occhialini's birth.
The official inauguration of the square finally took place on 22 June 2009, in the presence of the rector of the Università Statale, Enrico Decleva, together with authorities from the university and the town. Also present were many of Beppo's friends, physicists and non-physicists, and his daughter, Etra.
The square is located 100 m from the old Physics Institute where, in the basement, Occhialini had established his Nuclear Emulsion Laboratory when he arrived in Milan in 1952. It is also within walking distance of the new physics department where he worked up to his retirement in 1983.
• For more about Occhialini's life and work, see The Scientific Legacy of Beppo Occhialini, P Redondi et al. (eds) Springer 2007 (CERN Courier May 2007 p49).