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The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Martina Gerbino, researcher at the INFN Ferrara Division, a Starting Grant worth € 1.5 million for her research project RELiCS (Revealing Elusive LIght particles with Cosmic microwave background surveys across cosmological Scales). The project is dedicated to studying the properties of neutrinos and other light particles by creating a strong synergy between theoretical models and the data of several experiments dedicated to studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the oldest form of radiation that can be observed with our telescopes.
The European Research Council Starting Grants are awarded each year and were devised to encourage the initial phase of researchers’ careers and their most promising projects. They are, indeed, allocated to those who have between two and seven years of post-doctoral experience and work in a public or private research organisation with its headquarters in one of the European Union member states or associated countries. The 2023 ERC Starting Grants were announced on 5 September last year.
RELICS is a project at the intersection between theoretical and experimental physics and will be developed over 5 years. We asked Martina Gerbino to tell us about her goals and expectations for developing the project she has created.
Can you explain to us what RELICS is and what its goals are?
My project will study one of the most elusive essential components of our universe, neutrinos, exploring their still unknown properties, like their mass and capacity for interaction. It will also investigate the possibility that other, more exotic components of our universe, like dark matter or still unknown particles linked to open questions in fundamental physics, may be generated in eras that are very remote from the history of our universe.
The scientific collaboration of the ALPHA experiment at CERN, in which the INFN National Institute of Nuclear Physics participates, has obtained the first direct observation of the effects of gravity on the motion of atoms of antihydrogen.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever met face to face with a Cartesian diver, built and operated a ball accelerator, or successfully popped a balloon inside another, leaving the latter intact… The HOP “Hands-On Physics” project ( www.hopscuola.it ) was designed to bring to the classroom these experiences, and to help junior secondary school students from all over Italy come up with their own scientific questions to understand different underlying phenomena.
The complex marine operation carried out by the KM3NeT Scientific Collaboration at the abyssal site off Capo Passero, in Sicily, was successfully concluded last September 21. The goal of the operation was to expand the ARCA (Astroparticle Research with Cosmics in the Abyss) apparatus of the KM3NET submarine telescope.
If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t know the Sun like we do today: it’s thanks to Gallex and Borexino, the experiments for detecting solar neutrinos that have operated in the underground experimental rooms of the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory, that we know how to explain how our star functions.
During the 96th plenary meeting of its 77th session, which was held on 25 August 2023, the United Nations General Assembly decided to adopt the resolution to proclaim 2024-2033 International Decade of Science for Sustainable Development.
Five days in Macugnana, at the foot of Monte Rosa, exploring the topic of natural radioactivity and finding out more about its geological origins and biological and environmental effects. More than thirty students in the final years of high schools from different Italian regions participated in the INFN initiative “RadioLab Summer School” from 10 to 15 September.
FROM GENEVA TO BOLOGNA IN 9.5 MILLISECONDS For the first time, the Italian research and education network GARR and the pan-European network GÉANT have successfully connected two data centres over 1000 km apart, taking into account the optical fibre path: the national computing centre CNAF of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Bologna, and CERN in Geneva, with a capacity of 1.6 Tbps and a latency of just 9.5 milliseconds, thanks to multi-domain shared spectrum.
The two data centres, in Italy and in Switzerland, can now seamlessly work together despite the distance and their different administrative domains. This solution provides a much faster connection with a larger and more scalable capacity at a fraction of the cost of upgrading a traditional packet connection.
A SEPTEMBER FULL OF SCIENCE THE EUROPEAN RESEARCHERS’ NIGHT 29 September Laboratories, Divisions, and Groups associated to INFN join the European Researchers’ Night, with scientific meetings, activities, and games in many Italian cities to get the wider public involved in the world of scientific research.
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HOP – Hands-on Physics
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