Indian Neutrino Observatory Will House the World's Biggest Magnet
India's Ministry of Environment and Forests just approved the building of the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO) in the Bodi West Hills, located in Tamil Nadu. The INO is a ridiculously ambitious project that dwarfs CERN, requiring 50,000 tons of magnetized iron to study neutrinos. Neutrinos are the elusive miniscule particles that are able to travel at tremendous speeds and pass through ordinary matter undetected, which of course makes it hard as hell to detect them. Scientists have previously built giant machines to attempt to study them, and proposed such goofy ideas as using the moon as a tester. But the INO might be the most impressive of all. First discussed in 1989, the INO was shuffled around due to a lack of resources (including a lack of trained physicists) and opposition from environmental groups (the original site was next to a tiger preserve). But a new program to train physicists was set...