Prime Minister Putin looked at a collider that is being built at the High Energy Physics Laboratory as part of the international Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility (NICA) project. The collider is supposed to be completed in 2017.

Laboratory head Vladimir Kekelidze told the prime minister that part of the technology that they are using to build their collider was also used to build the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, but the bulk of their equipment has no analogue anywhere in the world.

Kekelidze also said that the collider's main goal is to create new forms of matter by colliding ions. "No other laboratory anywhere in the world has the conditions to do this," he said.

Putin asked if the process could be compared to what happens in colliding stars and galaxies. Kekelidze replied that scientists will use the results of their research and collider experiments to study processes that take place within stars.

He also said their research could have large practical importance. For example, cryogenic accelerators can be used in medicine, including radio medicine, in nuclear energy industry, aerospace and electronics. "We are now studying the possibility of using heavy nuclei beams for cancer therapy," Kekelidze said.

The prime minister also learned about other research projects underway at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, which will celebrate its 55th anniversary this year. The staff of this intergovernmental research institute comprises 5,500 specialists, including scientists from 18 countries, who are working on projects in fundamental sciences, innovation and education.

Over the past ten years, the institute's scientists discovered six new super-heavy elements from Mendeleyev's periodic table, for which project leaders received the 2010 State Prize of the Russian Federation for Science and Technology.