Session 1E: Special Session

Chairperson: Amol Dighe, TIFR, Mumbai

Underground science facility as a multi-science activity

Farsighted recognition of the high potential of underground science facilities for spawning imaginative ideas for testing and formulating incisive hypotheses has led to the creation of multiple such facilities worldwide. These USFs provide opportunities for bringing expertise from diverse fields together. For example, a USF would provide an excellent site for locating an ultra-long period seismograph that would record the normal modes of the Earth at a high signal/noise ratio. Estimating the density field of the Earth independently from normal mode seismology and neutrino tomography can synergize a widespread use of numerical mantle convection models to elucidate and explore the many complex problems of the Earth and its dynamics from first principles. These two independent theoretical formalisms involving a shared quantity with constraints provided by the density functional theory, would yield better estimates of matter density field in the deep Earth, than either would do singly, through a joint inversion or data assimilation framework. Other exciting areas of scientific enquiry are also bound to get energized, not only in particle or nuclear physics, but also in life-related sciences, not to mention the new abilities in technology that would accrue in the process of setting up such a facility. I fondly hope that our deliberations here, bringing out the high desirability of setting up a USF in the country, will be strongly endorsed by the Academy and, in turn, by the authorities whose early decision will ensure that we are not too late in venturing into a scientific arena where several forward-looking societies have already gone ahead.