The United Nations is unofficially divided into five geopolitical regional groupings. Depending on the UN context, regional groups control elections to UN-related positions, dividing up the pie on the basis of geographic representation, as well as coordinate substantive policy, and form common fronts for negotiations and voting.

India’s attendance at Copenhagen is on the basis of a political consensus which rules out any constraints on economic growth while advocating the implementation of the principle agreed upon in the UN Framework for Cooperation against Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Bali action plan. According to these agreements, developing countries are not legally bound to curb their greenhouse emission while developed countries are expected to provide them resources and technology to reduce emissions.

Many developing nations want the rich to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Mainly from burning fossil fuels, by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 as a condition for action by the poor to start curbing their rising pollution, so far, promises by the rich fall far short, at cuts of about 11 to 15 per cent. And developed nations have yet to meet promises of extra aid to developing countries.

Big Bang machine was developed by European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. Using it, scientists at the 55- year-old CERN hope to recreate conditions similar to the ‘big bang’- a cosmic explosion hypothesized to have marked the origin of the universe. They also hope the LHC will help them learn more about the highs boson- a sub-atomic particle that is predicted to exist but has never been found.

On November 24 world’s largest atom smasher used its accelerator for the first time to speed up the proton beam from 450 to 540 billions electron volts, still a long way from 1, 2 trillion electron volts that will be needed for new discoveries into the makeup of the universe and matter.