NATARAJA STATUE AT CERN, GENEVA& ITS SIGNIFICANCE

Dr. BHASKAR CHAKRABORTY Professor of Chemistry Sikkim Government College (NBBGC) An Extension Centr

The huge statue of “Nataraja” is a point of attraction to all of us situated just outside the world’s largest and famous physics laboratory better known as “CERN”at Geneva, Switzerland where the research of “God Particle” named as “Higgs-boson” took place in 4^th July, 2012. One of the world’s premier institutes, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, has the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter, the fundamental particles.  It’s an international organization that conducts research in particle physics. It houses the “Large Hadron Collider” (LHC) which is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.In 2004, a two meter statue of the “Dancing Shiva” (Nataraja statue) was unveiled at CERN, the European Center for Research in Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. The statue, symbolizing Shiva’s cosmic dance of creation and destruction was given to CERN by the Indian government to celebrate the research center's long association with Indiawhich started in the 1960’s and remains strong today. India enjoys the position of “Associate Member State”. CERN’s founding states included Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden. Switzerland, United Kingdom and Yugoslavia.

Nataraja statute explains the structure of the atom and therefore scientists decided to place it on the CERN campus. The posture of the statue called ‘Anand Tandavam’ is the motion similar to the motion of sub atoms.It is normally called as the “Cosmic Dance”.CERN is a multicultural organization that welcomes scientists from more than 100 countries and 680 institutions. The Shiva statue is only one of the many statues and art pieces at CERN.The statue indicates continuous creation and continuous destruction, it also indicates the positive and negative charge. The unique thing in the Nataraja statue is attaining equilibrium, since the statute has to be  precisely carved so that the center of gravity  made to stand on the lord’s toe. Now one can imagine the amount of weight granite stones have, balancing the weight on the toe can be done only when the lord’s head tip to the toe forms a straight line helical string (exactly like our DNA).If we consider that the string structure is a coincidence with DNA, we would be surprised again that the length scale is exactly the same as our human DNA. According to sculptor standards, the foot has to bear the entire load of the statute which requires a good understanding of classical mechanics.The image keeps on surprising us every time, since recently the length of the distance from the third eye to the heart is exactly the scaled down version of the distance from Sun to Earth. 

In the Hindu religion, Lord Shiva practices the Nataraja dance, which symbolizes “Shakti or life force”. The Indian government chose this deity because of a metaphor between the cosmic dance of the Nataraja and the modern study of the ‘Cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles.Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shiva’s in a beautiful series of bronzes. Physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.CERN in its quest to decode the universe is confronting a problem that isn’t just scientific but it is existential. Lord Shiva, the cosmic dancer reminds scientists that the universe is not built on rigid equations alone, but on movement, rhythm and uncertainty.Shiva’s Tandava, his eternal dance, represents the fundamental forces that drive the universe and so creation, preservation and destruction all happening simultaneously. It is a cosmic process, one that echoes not only the grand scale of the universe but also the strange, counterintuitive world of quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, nothing is static. An electron is not a fixed entity but a probability wave. A vacuum is not empty but a seething sea of virtual particles flashing in and out of existence. At its most fundamental level, the universe is not a place, it is a process. The mind of western people has always struggled with quantum physics, much like it has with paganism, never quite able to decipher how a particle can also be a wave or vice versa. Due to this difficulty perhaps greats like Oppenheimer are often drawn to “Vedanta”. This dichotomy is evident in reactions to the statue of Lord Shiva at CERN, the world’s most advanced particle physics laboratory and home to the Large Hadron Collider. J.Robert Oppenheimer, one of great theoretical, particle and quantum mechanical physicist played a key role in the creation of CERN and advocated for collaboration between scientists across Europe. In his famous book “Science And The Common Understanding” Oppenheimer has written “As I sat on that beach, my former experiences came to life; I saw cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses; I saw the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I heard its sound, and at that moment, I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers worshipped by the Hindus.”

In a nutshell, CERN’s Nataraja statue had acquired appreciations from so many physicists in the last century from all over the glove. The De Broglie’s theory and Max Planks theories of “Dual Nature of Matter” is a common concept in Lord Shiva’s Nataraja dance and in fact they all have strong beliefs on “dual nature of matter and parallel universe”, multiverse and warm holes. Nataraja statue is a stoic reminder for CERN research staff to know the “creation and destruction” are dual in nature and happens at the same time, which they indeed found successfully in “Higgs Boson”.The dance embodies the perpetual motion of the cosmos, where matter is never static but constantly shifting between states, much like the subatomic world described by quantum mechanics. In this eternal rhythm, destruction is not an end but a necessary transition for renewal, mirroring the natural laws governing energy and matter.The Nataraja dance exists in five forms, representing the cosmic cycle from creation to dissolution. Srishti: creation, evolution; Sthiti: preservation, support; Samhara: destruction, evolution: Tirobhava:  illusion; Anugraha: release, emancipation, grace. According to the scientists at CERN “Shiva’s limbs flail outward in a centrifugal explosion of energy, yet his face remains serene, embodying a paradox at the heart of existence. It is this fusion of dynamism and poise, chaos and order that makes the Nataraja not just a religious icon but a profound metaphor for the dance of the universe itself”.

The Nataraja statue represents a metaphor between mythology and science and is a real wonder at CERN where scientists also can’t ignore the fact that the creation and destructions of our universe is a simultaneous process.

Acknowledgement:

CERN Library Geneva e books, journals on particle physics and research works on J. R. Oppenheimer