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What are the big differences between working under the Soviet system and
today?

In Soviet times, much of our work was secret. I couldn’t send papers to
Western journals, or participate in international conferences. International
collaboration only occurred under the strict supervision of bureaucrats from
Moscow. So we were ignored. But I did have as much money as I wanted to do my
work. Our institute’s budget was many times what it is today. We did well
because we used to be part of a big Soviet ministry where military science was
concentrated. Fifty years ago, when the observatory was set up, cosmic ray
research was seen as part of the theoretical basis for the Soviet atomic bomb
project. Particle physics was then mostly done with cosmic rays. Later, we
investigated the hazards from cosmic rays to the electronics on military
missiles. Today, Armenia is independent and that is all gone. There is not even
a science policy in Armenia. Basically, I have nobody to report to. I can
collaborate with whomever I choose, send PhD students to international
conferences and start whatever projects I like. I have total freedom—if I
can find the money.

How have you kept going? Where does your funding come from?

Our overall budget for this observatory is only $200 000 a
year—that’s for a total staff of 100, including 40 scientists. In the West
it would cost a hundred times more to do what we do, because of higher salaries
and so on. About a sixth of our budget is supposed to come from the Armenian
government. But for the past two years it has not been meeting its obligations.
It doesn’t even pay the electricity bill. We scientists haven’t been paid a
salary by them since last April. So our strategy is to build an international
reputation, through collaborations and scientific networks, to attract
international funds. Two-thirds of our money now comes from scientific
institutions abroad, half of that in grants from the International Science and
Technology Centre in Moscow, set up to provide peaceful employment for ex-Soviet
weapons and radiation scientists. We got money from NATO to establish Internet
links. The rest comes from the Armenian diaspora. We have some good friends
among Armenians in the US, who help us.

Armenia was seen as the science centre of the Soviet Union, for physics
especially. Has that all gone?

Yes, and you can understand why. The average government salary for scientists
is only $30 a month, though here we pay an extra $100 a month from
our international funds. Because of this many scientists and students are
leaving Armenia. They can earn a hundred times their state salary by going
abroad. In any case, many of Armenia’s best facilities have been shut down. The
Yerevan particle accelerator, in its day one of the biggest in the world, has
been in operation for only a month out of the past nine years because there is
no money to run it. In the 1980s, we had plans to install gamma-ray telescopes
here on Mount Aragats. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the two
scientists involved moved the project to the Canary Islands, where they have got
German and Spanish funding.

Has your standard of living deteriorated?

Not much today. I have what I need. But things were very bad between 1991 and
1993, after independence, when almost everything stopped in Armenia. We had no
electricity or heating most of the time, and there was no water in my family’s
apartment on the 15th floor. I had to go and fetch water from the street several
times a day. There was no lift and no light in the corridors and it was terribly
difficult to climb the icy steps.

Do you come from a scientific family?

My father, Agassi, was director of Armenia’s Institute of Zoology. I have
worked as a physicist in Armenia for 30 years, with short periods at CERN, and
in Moscow, Dublin and Karlsruhe. I became head of the cosmic ray observatory in
1993. My son graduates in mathematics from Moscow State University this summer.
He is only interested in computers and helps maintain our server here. I hope I
can persuade him to work in Armenia.

Does the observatory have a future?

Yes. One of our main future commercial activities is going to be forecasting
solar radiation storms, when unpredictable fluxes of protons and electrons cross
the Solar System and reach the Earth. They can cripple satellites and endanger
astronauts. The world is depending more and more on satellites for
telecommunications, GPS navigation, weather forecasts and so on. If these were
knocked out it would be a global disaster. It could black out the cellphone
networks, for instance. Solar storms also set off geomagnetic storms in the
Earth’s atmosphere that can bring down power grids. Remember the famous disaster
in Quebec in 1989, when a solar storm knocked out electrical transformers? The
province had no electricity for 10 hours in freezing temperatures. We are at a
time of historically low activity from this space weather. We know from
examining 500 years of ice cores drilled from the Antarctic that the 19th
century saw much more intense solar activity. And the signs are that activity is
now rising again in the 21st century. Satellites are not equipped to cope with
this, so there is real danger.

But surely NASA satellites already do forecasts? What can you offer?

NASA can announce when the storms arrive, but it cannot give accurate early
warnings or predict how severe they will be. We think we can do that. NASA uses
detectors aboard a satellite in space. They can directly measure the low-energy
solar particles that do the damage. But on the ground we can use a much larger
array of detectors, covering hundreds of square metres, to measure the much
smaller fluxes of high-energy particles that come ahead of them. These
high-energy particles reach the Earth from the Sun in as little as 10 minutes.
That can provide between 30 and 60 minutes’ warning of the most dangerous
radiation from solar storms—enough time for astronauts to abandon their
space walks and for satellites to shut down sensitive equipment. We believe that
by correlating the space and ground-based observations in real time, we can
provide the first reliable instant forecasts via the Internet.

What equipment do you use for this?

We use neutron monitors that we have had since Soviet times, plus a muon
telescope and a solar scintillation telescope. If we detect abrupt increases,
our software will start to analyse the data and if necessary issue a formal
alert via the Internet. We have been running a test service since earlier this
year, but we are planning additional detectors and improved data handling and
software. We just reached a period of maximum solar activity and over the next
three to four years there is a high risk of severe storms. Of course we cannot
watch solar activity 24 hours a day from here. But we hope to set up an alert
system with other cosmic ray centres in Switzerland, Bolivia, Tibet and Japan to
do that. It will be the best in the world.

This could be a lucrative business . . .

We think the forecast and alert system could become a major commercial
activity for us. We want commercial contracts to provide a service to
telecommunications companies and others. I can say that our service, when it is
fully functioning, will be the only accurate service that can forecast the
hazard of—in particular—very severe radiation storms. Such storms
are expected to be very rare—there have been three in the past 50 years,
in 1956, 1972 and 1989. But the consequences can be very serious. We think we
can help save billions of dollars by issuing warnings, allowing satellites to
switch off their electronics before a severe storm.

What other research do you do?

With German collaborators, we are trying to discover the origins of cosmic
rays. We are analysing the energy spectra of different nuclei in cosmic rays to
see whether they come from supernova explosions—the most powerful known
explosions in the Universe. We are also looking at the physical mechanisms
behind solar flares, which could help improve our forecasts. And we are working
with the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah to see whether
statistical software developed for cosmic ray physics can be used to isolate how
gene clusters are expressed in cancerous tissue.

You are on top of the highest mountain in Armenia. The height must make it
good for capturing cosmic rays, but it must make life rather inconvenient . . .

Yes. It is lovely in summer, but the winters are long. Even though we are at
the same latitude as Naples, we are at 3200 metres and it gets very cold up
here, averaging –15 °C in winter and going down to –40 °C at
night. The roads are not cleared of snow as they were in Soviet times. We can
only reach the station once every three weeks, using very old Soviet bulldozers.
We have tunnels between the buildings so we don’t have to go outside. But it is
the winds that are most dangerous. I am afraid the roof on our main laboratory
may blow off this winter. It has not been repaired for a long time. Over New
Year the electricity line blew down and we had no power to operate the
equipment.

What will you do if it does blow off?

Oh, that’s easy. We’ll go and get it back again. We don’t have another. The
physical structure of our buildings is actually our biggest problem. We get
money from abroad for equipment and scientific personnel, but nobody wants to
pay for basic infrastructure. The government should do that, but I’m sure we
will not get money from them in the future. We are trying to raise money from
the Armenian diaspora in the US to repair our buildings. We would like to make
money from tourists using rooms here in summer. It is a lovely spot, 3200 metres
up on the shore of Lake Kari with the summit of Mount Aragats behind. There is
good walking. But first we have to repair the rooms.

It sounds daunting. Why do you stay?

I like the mountains. But also, whatever the problems, I can do my science
here. And I don’t want to stop cosmic ray research in Armenia. We have done
really good work here, and we will do so again.