Major Atmospheric Cherenkov Experiment (MACE) in Ladakh

• MACE is a state-of-the-art ground-based gamma-ray telescope inaugurated in Hanle, Ladakh, on October 4.

• It is the highest imaging Cherenkov telescope in the world, with a 21-metre-wide dish, the largest of its kind in Asia and second-largest in the world.

• The telescope is built by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd., and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.

• Gamma rays are produced by exotic energetic objects in the cosmos, including rapidly spinning pulsars, supernova explosions, hot whirlpools of matter around black holes, and gamma-ray bursts.

• The gamma rays are a health hazard due to their high energy, which can damage living cells and trigger deleterious mutations in DNA.

• The earth’s atmosphere blocks gamma rays from reaching the ground, so astronomers prefer using space observatories.

• The MACE telescope is an Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescope (IACT) with a light collector and a camera, each consists of four smaller mirrors arranged in a honeycomb structure.

• The telescope has a moving weight of 180 tonnes and stands on a base with six wheels that roll along a 27-metre-wide curved track.

• The main goal of MACE is to study gamma rays with more than 20 billion eV of energy, examine high-energy gamma rays emitted from near black holes beyond the Milky Way, and explore a class of hypothetical dark-matter particles.

• The MACE telescope could help verify whether WIMPs actually exist and make up dark matter or if this hypothesis is flawed.