MOSCOW, February 27. /ITAR-TASS/. Cooperation by Russian and American nuclear physicists has continued since the late 1960s and its scientific results are mutually beneficial, a professor of Institute for High Energy Physics, Nikolai Tyurin, said in a lecture at Russia’s Education and Science Ministry on Thursday.
The professor recalled that Soviet-American cooperation had started in 1967 at the Russian proton accelerator, located in the tech town of Protvino, in the Moscow region. However, all the following joint projects have been conducted in the US territory since 1971.
Tyurin stressed that Russia-US collaboration on fundamental material properties had never ceased. He especially pointed to the achievements of the 1980s, when the countries exchanged critical technologies. “Our joint efforts have brought fruit”, he said.
Today’s collaboration encompasses joint work at US colliders, which started back in 1993. Russia delegated 150 workers and researchers from nine national institutes and universities 20 percent of whom were young specialists; some 150 works were published in scientific magazines. “The results are in great demand at the international level”, added the scientist.
Russian physicists have participated in the experiments, conducted in the two biggest national US laboratories. As far as the numbers are concerned, fifty four Russian specialists worked in the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), while Russia invested 15 million U.S. dollars in the research. As a result, a new elementary particle, the top quark (t quark), was discovered in 1995. Besides that, the scientists investigated the oscillation of muon-neutrinos, as well as neutrino-nucleus interactions. Moreover, Russians created very useful instruments to conduct experiments, such as spectrometers, detectors and absorbents.
The experiments in the US Brookhaven National Laboratory involved 35 Russian researchers and a 16-million U.S. dollars investment. The scientists discovered a very rare disassociation of kaon (K meson) and observed the collisions between antihelium-4 nuclei and gold ions.
Professor Tyurin believes that cooperation by Russia and the US in nuclear physics should definitely be continued and his audience actively supported the idea. “The US laboratories possess a unique research basis. The relevance of all the conducted research is proved by their results, they are of international character. On the other hand, they help uphold the scientific potential of Russian specialists”, added one of the experts, who participated in the lecture.