Home › Future
Future · The candidacy
Two Nobel Prizes in Physics rest on plates exposed on this mountain. That evidence gave rise to scientific institutions in two countries. Eighty years on, the site is still at the frontier of its discipline. The UNESCO candidacy asks for formal recognition of a relationship that UNESCO itself began here in 1951.
The candidacy does not rest on nostalgia. It rests on four verifiable claims, each backed by documentation that can be located, and on a formal statement by the world’s highest authority in physics.
On 28 February 1964, following the International Cosmic Ray Conference in Jaipur, the Cosmic Ray Commission of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics declared Chacaltaya (Bolivia) and Kolar (India) essential for research in its field. It is a formal, dated and verifiable statement, not a retrospective assessment.
Read milestone 04 →In 1947 the plates exposed on this mountain provided the proof of the pi meson that physics had been seeking for twelve years. The Nobel Prizes of Powell (1950) and Yukawa (1949) rest on that evidence.
Read milestone 02 → Relationship with UNESCO UNESCO has been here beforeSix inter-American seminars organised with UNESCO between 1951 and 1975, with proceedings published in the name of both institutions, and the “Man and the Biosphere” programme housed in this building. The candidacy does not open the relationship: it acknowledges it.
Read milestone 05 → Institutional value The laboratory that founded Bolivian scienceNine institutional branches grew out of this mountain between 1956 and 1980: the nuclear energy commission, the country’s first computing centre, today’s Faculty of Sciences and much of the state’s science-policy apparatus.
See the institutional tree (in Spanish) → The full story The ten milestonesThe narrative thread of the site and of the nomination file, from 1942 to the present. Each milestone has its chronology, its heritage argument, its sources and its open questions, in Spanish, English and Portuguese.
Go to “Past” →A UNESCO nomination file is built in stages and in the open. This is what has been done and what remains, as of September 2026.
Seventeen records catalogued, five with digitised material and twelve still to be located. It is the piece that carries the most weight with UNESCO, and the site shows its gaps instead of hiding them: each pending record states where to look.
Go to the archive (in Spanish) →A public, updatable list of the formal steps: Tentative List, nomination dossier, evaluation. This page must exist and be kept up to date — a nomination file with no visible status loses credibility. ⚠
Downloadable, numbered versions of the documents in the file, so that institutions and evaluators always cite the same version. ⚠
Institutions and individuals who have expressed their support, with the corresponding letter or agreement. None is recorded on the site at present. ⚠
Recognition is not the end of the project. It is the condition that makes the next step possible.
Documents, photographs and memories; institutional endorsements; help with translation and digitisation; outreach. Much of what is missing from the file is today in private hands — in boxes, on hard drives and in the memory of those who worked on the mountain.
See how to help (in Spanish) →The idea of turning the site into a regional reference centre for astroparticle physics in the southern hemisphere, building on ALPACA and the existing infrastructure. ⚠
Documents, photographs, memories, institutional endorsements or outreach. There is more than one way to contribute, and every one counts.
See how to help (in Spanish)