On March 20, Minister of University and Research Anna Maria Bernini paid a visit to the former Sos Enattos mine in the Nuoro area of Sardinia, where she was greeted by a large and warm participation of the local community, with representatives from institutions, civil society and staff of the mine candidate to host the Einstein Telescope science project.
The Einstein Telescope will be the large research infrastructure for the next-generation gravitational wave detector, recognized by the roadmap of ESFRI, The European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures, as a strategic infrastructure at the European level.
In the international scenario, the Sardinian site currently competes with another site identified in the border region between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The candidacy of the Sardinian site can count as strengths on the characteristics of the area, which guarantee the very low levels of seismic and anthropogenic noise that Einstein Telescope needs, on the broad scientific and institutional consensus at national and local levels, and on the expertise of the Italian scientific community, thanks to the excellence of the research institutes and universities participating in the project, and thanks to the tradition in gravitational wave research, in which INFN has been a protagonist for more than four decades.
