Dancing Shiva at CERN

The offical explanation

This Shiva statue was actually a gift (gifted earlier in 2004) when India became an Associate State Member of CERN in 2017, and it's given by the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India. But many of you know that this was a gift from India, but why the statue of Lord Shiva and why specifically Lord Nataraja, which is the dance avatar of Shiva?

Carl Sagan was the first person who drew a metaphor between the dance of particles of the cosmic universe with the dance of Lord Nataraja, so Shiva is also known as the Lord of cosmic dance, and that's why with this metaphor it's the perfect gift to the scientific laboratory of particle physics.

There is the Sanskrit inscription of the four phrases which is quite significant to this statue. It literally translates to: "O omnipresent, the embodiment of all virtues, the creator of this cosmic universe, the king of dancers, who dances the Ananda Tandava in the twilight, I salute thee." The source is taken from verse 56 of Sivanandalahari by Sri Adi Sankara.

And that's your trivia info for the time.