Einstein Telescope and Sardinia at Festival Della Scienza di Genova

On Wednesday, Nov. 1, at 9 p.m., in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of Palazzo Ducale at the Genoa Science Festival, the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) is organizing “The Future Under the Mountain – The Telescope in the Mine and Sardinia,” a conference-show featuring Einstein Telescope, Europe’s third-generation gravitational wave detector, and one of the candidate sites to host it, Sardinia.

We will set out on a journey from the depths of a mine in Barbagia to the most remote place in the universe, the Big Bang. Accompanying us will be Massimo Carpinelli, director of EGO and professor at the University Milano Bicocca, and Marcello Fois, Sardinian writer and playwright, with moderation by Edwige Pezzulli, astrophysicist and science communicator. Their talk will be accompanied by the narrative interventions of actress and screenwriter Diana Höbel, who will stage a poetic journey among voices and echoes from the heart of Sardinia, the stories of miners from every era and our aspiration to explore the Cosmos.

Einstein Telescope is one of Europe’s major research projects with world-class scientific impact, and Italy is one of the candidate countries to host it, in Sardinia in the area of the disused Sos Enattos mine in the Nuoro area. ET will be able to observe a volume of the universe at least 1,000 times larger than current second-generation instruments, the LIGO interferometers in the United States and Virgo in Italy, whose scientific collaborations first observed gravitational waves, predicted 100 years earlier by Albert Einstein, in 2015, a discovery that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.

The lecture-show will explore topics on the border between frontier science and the ancient tradition of an area like Sardinia, asking how the two can coexist in such an ambitious research project and enrich each other. After all, the same geological and geographical features that have influenced Sardinia’s history and culture make it an ideal site today to protect the telescope from environmental and human ‘noise,’ due to its very low seismicity and thinning human presence. ET will therefore connect the culture of mining with the most advanced technological trades, the traditions of the Sardinian territory with the international reality of a major research center, creating a model of social and economic development for the entire region to look to.

The long scientific experience of Massimo Carpinelli, who also served as rector of the University of Sassari, and the deep knowledge of the Sardinian people, their traditions and their art, of Marcello Fois will meet to answer these important questions.

For information and reservations: https://www.festivalscienza.it/programma-2023/il-futuro-sotto-la-montagna