Sieren's China

Majorana and Gerda sound more like a narcotic or a woman's name. But in this cas, they are the names of joint research projects of the Americans and the Europeans. Both projects are searching for the ghost particle. Physicists have not yet been able to prove its existence. The proof of the particle would be a major achievement for science. The particle could explain how dark matter in space is composed and therefore solve one of the biggest mysteries of natural sciences.

China becomes a scientific super power

Despite years of research neither Majorana nor Gerda have produced notable results so far. That was no problem until the Chinese joined the search for the particle. But now it seems that the Chinese can easily overtake western scientists. At least they have created the best possible conditions for it.

Scientist Dongming Mei, one of the most renowned experts in building ghost particles detectors, has worked in the US for many years. But when he heard that, back home, they are also searching for the ghost particle, he moved back to China. Who can hold it against him? His American colleagues could have never dreamed that China might become a more attractive location than the US.

Another element is needed to prove the existence of the ghost particle. This element is germanium. And it is very difficult to produce. The detectors of ultra-clean germanium built by Dongming and his colleagues need a special environment to detect the ghost particles. You don't just need the most advanced electronic but also very clean technology. A single dust particle at the body of a scientist can distort the results. China needs help with this issue.

Biggest underground laboratory

And it is even more important that the experiments are shielded from cosmic radiation from outer space. Therefore the laboratories, in which they search for the ghost particle, have to be deep below the surface.

For a long time, no one thought the Chinese could manage all that. But now they have built the deepest underground laboratory of the world in the mountains of Sichuan province in the south of the country. One hangar is already finished and another seven are to be constructed by 2018.

Then - at the very latest - the Chinese will replace the underground laboratory in the central Italian Gran Sasso mountains as the leading research facility for ghost particles. There, the scientists have trouble raising the 500 million euros for the construction of a particle detector. Now they jealously look to the east, where money is no object.

The laboratory is more or less the by-product of the largest dam in the world, which is being built by 80,000 workers at the Yalong River. Compared to the new laboratory in Sichuan province, the laboratory in the Gran Sasso mountains looks like a playroom.

The cosmic radiation, which is annoying for the scientists, is 200 times weaker under the Sichuan mountains than under the Gran Sasso mountains. There, an unprecedented detector of 1000 kilograms of pure germanium will be constructed, which costs at least 500 million euros. China is already a high-tech nation and it is also becoming a space nation. And now they want to gain a foothold in elementary physics - the elite class of natural sciences.

European scientists already cooperating

The Europeans, among them the scientists from the Munich Max Planck Institute for Physics, have been so attracted by China's ambitions that they recently struck an agreement to cooperate under the leadership of the Chinese.

However, the Americans remain skeptical. They only want to take an advisory role at the most. For science, it would be better if they joined forces. But it is difficult for the representatives of the ascending and the declining world powers. The cooperation between the US and Europe works very well. But it is obvious that the big problems in a multipolar world have to be solved together.

Therefore all those involved have to exercise restraint. And a Nobel Prize in Physics accepted by scientists from the US, Europe and China would be the reward and mean huge political progress.

Our correspondent Frank Sieren is considered one of the leading German experts on China. He has lived in Beijing for the past 20 years.