ISLAMABAD, Oct 20: Fundamental research is a powerful driving force behind all major technological advances in history compared to applied research and development.

This was said by Prof Luciano Maiani, director-general, CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, on Monday.

He was speaking at the three-day Grid Technology Workshop organized jointly by the National Centre for Physics (NCP) in collaboration with CERN to train young Pakistani scientists in the use of data grids and other related techniques.

In remarks that may be considered especially pertinent to policymakers in Pakistan who oppose expenditure on basic sciences, the veteran scientist said basic sciences such as particle physics had the potential for integrating the developing countries into an ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) network, essential to bridge the digital divide.

Applied R&D “might make you a better candle, but it will not bring you to the electric light bulb or to nuclear energy,” he quipped.

Basic sciences, Prof Maiani went on to state, were contributing in an essential way to the development of modern ICT, first with the World Wide Web (WWW) and now with data grid.

Since its invention at CERN in 1990 and being put on public domain in 1994, the web had gone on to revolutionalize the way “we share information and do business. Its value to the world’s economy would have paid for all the fundamental science done last century many times over,” he said.

Grid technology, Prof Maiani, explained would be crucial to exploit the physics potential of the new accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was today being constructed at CERN by a wide international collaboration, which included Pakistan as well as India, China, Japan and other eastern and far eastern countries.

The LHC would produce enormous quantities of data equivalent to 15 million DVD movies every year.

Particle physicists at CERN and elsewhere, he said, were committed to developing new tools with potential benefits for all countries on both sides of the digital divide in areas of science, education, medicine, technology and economic development.

To obtain the maximum possible benefit from these revolutionary developments, four conditions had to be met, he pointed out.

These conditions are that fundamental scientific information be made freely available; software tools for disseminating this information be made freely available; networking infrastructure for distributing this information be established worldwide and training of people and equipment to use this information be provided to host nations.

The fulfilment of these conditions was a formidable challenge which will require a close collaboration of science, industry and governments.