Now Reading: India gifted CERN a Shiva Nataraja statue in 2004
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India gifted CERN a Shiva Nataraja statue in 2004
At CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory near Geneva, a 2-metre-tall bronze statue of Shiva Nataraja stands as a gift from India, unveiled on June 18, 2004. The statue was presented to celebrate India's longstanding scientific collaboration with CERN, which dates back to the 1960s, by then CERN Director-General Robert Aymar, Indian Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar, and India's ambassador K. M. Chandrasekhar.
The statue's presence is a metaphor linking the ancient image of cosmic creation and destruction with modern physics. A plaque beside the statue quotes physicist Fritjof Capra, who wrote in his 1975 book 'The Tao of Physics' that 'Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter.' The imagery represents a universe in perpetual motion, paralleling the quantum world of particles that interact, transform, and emerge in processes studied at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
While not a scientific claim, the statue offers a cultural reminder that the search for understanding the universe spans both laboratory equations and millennia of art and mythology. It stands above the LHC's 27-kilometre underground ring, where particles collide at near light speed to recreate conditions of the early universe.
Indian Opinion Analysis
India's partnership with CERN began in the 1960s and became formal in 2004 when India was granted observer status. Indian scientists have contributed to key CERN experiments, including the LHC's CMS detector and the ALICE experiment studying quark-gluon plasma. The Nataraja statue was commissioned by the Indian government as a symbol of this deepening scientific bond. For Indian visitors, the statue is a rare intersection of national cultural heritage and cutting-edge physics. Watch for India's continued involvement in CERN's next-generation projects, such as the proposed Future Circular Collider.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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