By IANS
Jaipur : A few years back, it was difficult to even think of Jaipur hosting an international technical conference. Today, the image of the city stands dramatically changed, thanks to the fast-developing tourism infrastructure.
The 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2008) is presently being held in the city in which many of the world famous scientists participate.
Over 400 scientists from India and abroad including M.G.K. Menon and Carlo Rubia are attending the conference, which will continue till Feb 10.
The scientists here are taking stock of the most contemporary scenario in this field, both in experiment and theory.
This conference is discussing and showcasing progress that is being made towards understanding the properties of nuclear matter at the highest energy densities (quark-gluon plasma or quark matter).
Issues like global and collective dynamics, strangeness production, heavy flavour and quarkonium production, electromagnetic probes, hadron correlations and fluctuations, new theoretical developments and future experimental facilities and instrumentations are expected to be discussed in the conference.
“Jaipur offers both business and pleasure, so we decided to organise the conference here”, Subhasis Chattopadya, convenor of the conference told IANS here on Tuesday.
He said that the conference has been devised in such a way that the participants could enjoy the beauty of the city through sightseeing.
Jaipur also offers quality hotel facilities and big convention centres.
The University of Rajasthan has been working in the field of Quark Matter for the last so many years. The university had organised two of the national conferences in 1997 and 2001.
Moreover, Jaipur is famous for its work on astrophysics. The Maharajas of Jaipur, having realised the importance of science, tried to link it with astrology.
The Jantar Mantar (observatory), a collection of architectural astronomical instruments, built by Maharaja Jai Singh II in Jaipur between 1727 and 1733, is an example of it.
“We wanted the international scientists to come face to face with our old developments in this area”, Tapan K. Nayak, a member of the organising committee said.