“Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger”: it was under this title that, ten years ago, the LIGO and Virgo experimental collaborations published in the journal Physical Review Letters the article presenting to the international scientific community and to the entire world the discovery of gravitational waves. The scientists of the two collaborations thus wrote and signed a new extraordinary chapter in the book of science. A historic milestone, recognised with the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year, which crowned the dream and endeavour of thousands of people and hundreds of institutions around the world who had worked on it. A dream and an endeavour deemed impossible to achieve by Albert Einstein himself, who one hundred years earlier had predicted in his theory of general relativity the existence of gravitational waves: ripples in spacetime, the four-dimensional structure of the universe, which propagate through the cosmos at the speed of light after being produced by astrophysical cataclysms, and whose effects on Earth, at the time of Einstein and even beyond, were thought to be too infinitesimal to be measured. Yet, after fifty years of research and technological developments beyond the state of the art, the dream has been realised, the endeavour successfully carried out, with enterprise and perseverance.
In this endeavour Italy and France have been leading protagonists, with INFN Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (National Institute for Nuclear Physics) and CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research) and their scientific communities which in Europe founded, funded and jointly conducted the Virgo project within the EGO European Gravitational Observatory consortium, today the only European centre where direct research on gravitational waves is carried out and where the younger generations of scientists can train in the field.
Today, 12 February 2026, the Italian Ministry of University and Research MUR, INFN, CNRS and EGO have promoted the event, hosted by the Embassy of France in Rome, The era of gravitational waves. Ten years of Virgo science and future prospects for a new way of exploring the universe, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first historic observation of gravitational waves, to retrace the discoveries that have arisen from this new way of studying the universe, and to look to the future of research in the field with the enhancement of the current detection instruments, and the design of new ones, such as the future third-generation interferometer Einstein Telescope.
“Scientific progress arises from cooperation and from the ability to share vision, expertise and investment”, comments the Minister of University and Research Anna Maria Bernini. “This is the deepest meaning of European integration in research: to network national excellences in order to generate results that no country, on its own, could achieve. Virgo and EGO represent one of the highest examples of this model. Italy and France, working together for over twenty years, have contributed decisively to the development of gravitational astronomy, opening a new season in the observation of the universe. Today that experience projects us towards the Einstein Telescope: the next great European scientific challenge and the new frontier in the observation of gravitational waves. Italy has chosen to be a protagonist in this path, with a clear political and financial commitment, in the conviction that scientific cooperation can truly make a difference in frontier research and therefore in global progress”, concludes Minister Bernini.
“The story of gravitational waves is a long, difficult and beautiful one, indeed a remarkable endeavour. It began over one hundred years ago, with a theoretical hypothesis by Einstein initially deemed unverifiable, and began to take shape fifty years later, when technological progress made it possible to envisage and build instruments capable of observing ripples in spacetime. And Italy and France, thanks to Adalberto Giazotto and Alain Brillet who launched the Virgo project, have been at the forefront of this endeavour from the very beginning, collaborating with vision, courage and determination”, comments Antonio Zoccoli, President of INFN. “In Italy, the path had been opened by Edoardo Amaldi, who inaugurated the line of research on gravitational waves and founded a school of excellence. Thanks to his legacy and to the contribution over the years of our entire community, today our country has the scientific, technological and industrial expertise to face the next great challenge: the Einstein Telescope, the third-generation interferometer that we hope to host in Sardinia, with the support of the Government and the Ministry of University and Research, and in particular of Minister Anna Maria Bernini”, concludes Zoccoli.
“This discovery is the result of decades of shared vision between France and Italy, through CNRS and INFN, and our European colleagues. But today, ten years after the observation of the first gravitational event, the most important message does not concern what we have already achieved but what lies ahead of us”, comments Alain Schuhl, Vice CEO for Science of the CNRS.
“Celebrating, ten years on, the announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves means at the same time recalling the history that led us to that extraordinary success and looking to the future”, comments Massimo Carpinelli, Director of EGO. “Thanks to the visionary proposal of Adalberto Giazotto and Alain Brillet and to the far-sighted Italian-French alliance, INFN and CNRS, more than thirty years ago, launched in Italy the project of one of the only three great gravitational antennas on the planet, Virgo, and founded the European Gravitational Observatory in Cascina. It is the success of this epoch-making scientific endeavour that today enables Europe to aspire to leadership in one of the most promising fields of fundamental research, by realising the Einstein Telescope, the gravitational detector of the next generation”, concludes Carpinelli.
