19-yr-old Kerala boy figured out Collider’s black hole issue six months ago but institute had no clue.
While you were sleeping last night the world didn’t end.
You probably know by now that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which many people speculated would suck the world up into a black hole when it was first turned on in 2008, was safe and working. What you probably don’t know is that a 19-year-old boy from Kerala had figured that out six months ago.
Prof CNR Rao, the former scientific advisor to the prime minister, lamented how youngsters ignored science research for lucrative professions. But the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc), of which he was the director, proved him wrong.
CV Midhun is a classic case of everything that’s bad with India’s scientific fraternity. The son of a temple priest in Naduvattom, Kerala doesn’t even have a computer but that did not stop him from sending his observations that the LHC was safe to professor M Vijayan of IISc’s molecular biophysics unit.
Vijayan admitted receiving Midhun’s observations and forwarding it to IISc’s centre for high energy physics. But after some days, when Midhun enquired about the status of his observations, he was told “We are still verifying it.”
Here’s the best part: B Ananathanarayanan, the chairman of high energy physics department, said he had no clue about Midhun’s observation.
“When nothing happened after two months, I mailed my observations directly to the scientists at European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN),” Midhun said. “I got a reply from nuclear physicist Abdul Gurdu.”
What the CERN scientists were impressed about –and which missed the eye of IISc scientists – is Midhun’s claim, based on a theory he worked out, that there would be no black holes created when protons collide and that there would be no threat to the world as feared by many.
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