From TOI
The famous water hole shown in the movie Awara is to be used as a Neutrino Detector
The famous water hole shown in the movie Awara is to be used as a Neutrino Detector.
The location for the immortal song
“dam bhar jo udhar muh phere” was a back lot water hole in RK movie studio. Now this famous water hole has found a new use after more than sixty years.
Awaara water hole - iconic scene
The Indian government has approved plans to reuse what was one of many temporary structures as an underground neutrino detector. Physicists will dismantle the water hole and rebuild it at the bottom of a salt mine near the Salumbar salt lake in Arawali hills in Rajasthan, where the 37 m pool will be filled with 1.8 million liters of ultra-pure water. Interestingly Salumbar hills is in the famous “cave” location depicted in the 1965 Bollywood blockbuster Guide. Neutrinos striking the water will, very occasionally, create charged particles that generate small bursts of Cerenkov radiation. This light will then be detected using a new type of detector that will line the inside wall of the pool.
RK Studio has always intended to reuse the water hole for good purpose once the right project is found. The water hole’s move to Salumbar is being funded by the USA’s DoD’s Leveraging Artistic Creativity with the Sciences (LACS) program. which is seeking to find scientific uses of movie studio infrastructure. LACS managing director, Kiran Mehta, a former actress and a physicist, told physicsworld.com that neutrinos and the Bollywood movies were "a perfect fit" because "like movies”, neutrinos push the limits of speed and imagination - possibly travelling faster than the speed of light for billions of light-years. Neutrinos, in the true sense of physics, are ultimate “awaara” (vagabond) “
Known as the Awara Muon Imaging Neutrino Tank (AMINT), the new facility will detect neutrinos via the muons that are produced when neutrinos interact with the ultrapure water. The international collaboration behind the project had spent several years looking for a suitable pool to hold the 1800 m3 of water needed to conduct its research, before realizing the awaara water hole was just the right size.
AMINT spokesperson Ruchita Godbole told physicsworld.com that the main focus of the research will be to study neutrinos created when ultra-high-energy cosmic rays collide with nuclei in the atmosphere. AMINT beat a competing experiment called the Low-energy Indirect Detector Orb for use of the water hole.
When the project is finished by April 2014, the water hole will be taken apart tile by tile. All 8000 tiles will then be sent to the Duke University to be coated with multiple layers of graphene. When reassembled, the tiles will become the world's fastest neutrino detector – thanks to the fact that electrons in graphene are able to move nearly as fast as light.
Nobel Laureate CV Raman.
Inspired by a 1971 photograph of Nobel laureate C. V. Raman taking a dip in the water surrounding his home made Raman effect detector in Banglore, AMINT will allow restricted swimming movie scenes filmed for special occasions in the reused water hole, provided that users shower with ultra-pure water first.
