The 9th Einstein Telescope (ET) Symposium is hosted by European gravitational Observatory, Cascina (Italy). The focus of the meeting is the creation of the ET collaboration, the definition of the strategy for the submission of the ET proposal to the 2020 update of the ESFRI roadmap. We will discuss the future of the GW astronomy and astrophysics.
Registration opens on the 15th February 2018. Here it is the link to the event: 9th ET Symposium.
Tuesday, 9th of January, 2018, more than 150 physicists, astrophysicists, policy makers, representative of the funding agencies and of the European Institutions meet in Brussels in the occasion of the APPEC roadmap. APPEC is the consortium of funding agencies that in Europe support the research in astroparticle and in particular the research in gravitational waves through terrestrial detectors. The APPEC roadmap represents the vision of the national funding agencies and of their scientists about the future research infrastructures and main research subjects in astroparticle in the next decade. Gravitational Waves play a central role in that roadmap, with the evolution of the current detectors, Advanced Virgo and Advanced LIGO, and the future 3rd generation GW observatory, the Einstein Telescope (ET), the key European research infrastructure that will lead the GW research in the 2030 decade. The whole meeting has been dominated by few words: “gravitational waves” and “multi-messenger astronomy and astrophysics” (MMA). In fact, the first detection of the coalescence of two binary neutron stars (GW170817), achieved by Advanced Virgo and Advanced LIGO the 17th of August 2017, opened the new MMA era. Hence, the plan for future research infrastructures in astroparticle needs to be though within this new framework, realising something to be named with a new title: the MMA roadmap.
Another great success for the Gravitational Wave research field: today the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne (LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration) for the discovery of the Gravitational Wave signal emitted by the coalescence of a binary system of black holes (GW150914). The detection has been the result of a great scientific, technological, human and financial effort thanks the collaboration of several countries for decades. The three Nobel prize awarded scientists, together other few pioneers, like Adalberto Giazotto and Alain Brillet in Europe, had the capability to believe, many years ago, to the possibility to reach what was considered impossible by Albert Einstein: the detection of gravitational waves.
The LIGO and Virgo collaborations realised this dream and now we are celebrating this success with a wonderful Nobel prize. The GraWIToN project, funded by the European Commission under the Marie Curie Actions, is contributing to the gravitational wave research training young researchers that are playing an active role in the current researches and will be first level actors in the future. As GraWIToN project coordinator I would like to thanks all the young researches for their efforts and the persons that are contributing to make GraWIToN a successful initiative, Elena Cuoco, the Scientific Coordinator of GraWIToN and Erika Morucci, the financial responsible.
GraWIToN is approaching to its conclusion, but, obviously, this adventure will not finish here!
Michele Punturo
GraWIToN Project Coordinator
The 16th of October the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors, together to about 70 telescopes in the world, announced the detection of the coalescence of a binary system of Neutron stars (see official announcement here). This event marks the beginning of a new epoch in the observation of the Universe: the era of the multi-messenger astronomy and astrophysics. New information will be extracted from the astrophysical events and a new paradigm has been inaugurated in the observation method, being the gravitational wave detectors operating as a trigger for electromagnetic telescopes.
GraWIToN young researchers participated actively to this discovery and surely will be the actors in the future of this research fields. Thanks to them and to all the GraWIToN team for this new success.
