India has been invited to participate in the prestigious USD one billion (about Rs 4,600 crore) anti-proton and ion research European Facility 'FAIR', to be built in Germany.
The facility will provide an extensive range of particle beams from protons and their anti-matter partners, anti-protons, to the uranium, the heaviest ion beam of all chemical elements.
Speaking at the Indian Physics Association meeting, Dr H Gutbrod, Director of a premier science institute GSI in Darmstadt, Germany, invited Indian scientists to participate in the upcoming international facility, though official discussion on the project with Indian authorities will begin only in January-February 2006.
The construction of the facility is expected to begin in 2007 and 75 per cent of the construction cost will be borne by Germany, Gutbrod said.
"Even if India contributes five per cent, it would be a wonderful experience scientifically," he added.
The principal goal of the new facility is to provide the international science community with a unique and technically innovative accelerator system to perform future forefront research concerning matter and intersections in other fields.
Key features, in addition to higher energies, are primarily upgrades by several orders of magnitude in beam currents, and beams of the highest phase-space density and quality to open new areas of research at the 'intensity' and 'precision' frontiers.