Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of the Kingdom of Thailand led a delegation to visit the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) on June 3.

 

Princess Sirindhorn listened to an introduction about JUNO by Academician WANG Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and spokesperson for the JUNO International Collaboration. She then took a cable car to the experimental detector construction site 700 meters underground.

 

Princess Sirindhorn carefully inspected the ongoing installation of the central detector and the debugging of the liquid scintillator purification equipment and quality inspection equipment. She also learned how the project team overcame many key technical problems.

 

A Thai representative of the JUNO International Collaboration made a report on the design, production and installation of the magnetic shielding system of the central detector, which was completed cooperatively by Chinese and Thai scientists, while Princess Sirindhorn took detailed notes.

 

Upon the conclusion of her visit, Princess Sirindhorn wrote her impressions of JUNO in the form of a Chinese saying,“以小见大”—“See the big from the small.” This saying captures the magic and importance of using tiny neutrinos to study the vast universe.

 

JUNO is a large-scale, fundamental scientific research project developed by China with a large degree of international participation. The JUNO International Collaboration was officially launched in Beijing in 2014 and consists of more than 700 scientists and engineers from 74 institutions in 19 countries and regions. 

 

Chulalongkorn University, Suranaree University of Technology and the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand are all members of JUNO. In 2017, Princess Sirindhorn witnessed the signing of a memorandum of scientific and technological cooperation by IHEP and these institutions. Since then, they have carried out a number of cooperative research activities in the field of high energy physics, including the Jiangmen neutrino experiment.

 

Academician Wang Yifang describes photomultiplier tube R&D to Princess Sirindhorn (Photo by ZHANG Guanjun from Nanfang Daily)

 

Princess Sirindhorn listens to the report of Thai representatives on Sino-Thai cooperation (Photo by ZHANG Guanjun from Nanfang Daily)