PEOPLE
THE PARTICLE PHYSICS SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY APPROVES THE NEW EUROPEAN RESEARCH STRATEGY IN THIS FIELD
Interview with Roberto Tenchini, President of the INFN Particle Physics National Scientific Committee
On 19 June, the new ESPPU (European Strategy Particle Physics Update) document, which sets out the scientific objectives and new challenges that will shape the future of research in this field in the short and long term, was officially approved at an open session of the CERN Council. This event marked the conclusion of a process, started in 2017, coordinated by the European Strategy Group (ESG), a working group of experts that discussed with the entire international scientific community in order to identify priorities and outline recommendations to strengthen the scientific, technological, economic and human capital of major research infrastructures. On this issue, we spoke with Roberto Tenchini, President of the INFN National Scientific Committee 1, who directs and coordinates the research activities of the Institute in this field.
What objectives inspired the new strategy?
The update of the European Particle Physics Strategy was obviously inspired and guided by science. As a first step in the process, priority scientific objectives were identified and on the basis of these, projects to achieve them were defined and will now have to undergo studies to verify their feasibility. The recommendations in the strategy document indicate, as primary scientific objectives, precision measurement of the properties of the Higgs boson and exploration of high energy frontiers as routes to enter the unexplored territory of the new physics beyond the standard model.
NEWS
RESEARCH
VIRGO AND LIGO OBSERVE A MYSTERIOUS OBJECT MERGING WITH A BLACK HOLE
For a long time the lack of observations of compact objects with masses ranging from 2.5 to 5 solar masses has left astrophysicists perplexed. This "grey area" is called mass gap: it is a range of masses apparently too light for a black hole and too heavy for a neutron star. Now, the scientific collaborations ...
RESEARCH
AMS: EVEN COSMIC RAYS HAVE A WEIGHT
The measurements of the AMS-02 experiment carried out on the International Space Station (ISS) have improved the knowledge of the properties of cosmic rays by detecting subtle differences between heavy and light rays, thus providing new opportunities for understanding the origins and propagation ...
APPLICATIONS
CARBON 14 DATING: INVESTIGATION OF THE HOLY FACE OF LUCCA PRESENTED
On 19 June, the results of the diagnostic tests on the Holy Face, an ancient and imposing wooden crucifix (247 cm) of great historical-artistic and religious importance, were presented to the press. The measurements, carried out by a team from the INFN Laboratory for Cultural Heritage and Environment (LABEC) ...
MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
FROM RADON MONITORING NEW RESULTS ON THE ACTIVITY OF THE PHLEGRAEAN FIELDS
With a study that lasted seven years, from 2011 to 2017, a group of researchers from the L. Vanvitelli University of Campania, INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and INFN monitored the radon emitted in two sites ...
SPACE
EUCLID SPACE TELESCOPE NEARS FINAL INTEGRATION
The ESA - European Space Agency's Euclid mission is about to reach another milestone on its journey to launch in 2022. Its two instruments, VIS (VISible Instrument) and NISP (Near Infrared Spectro-Photometer), implemented with a significant Italian contribution from the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) ...
TECHNOLOGY
SUPERKEKB WINS NEW WORLD RECORD FOR BRIGHTNESS
The SuperKEKB accelerator, at the KEK laboratory in Japan, recently set a new world record for brightness, achieving 2,25×1034 cm-2 s-1, and thus breaking the previous record of 2,14×1034 cm-2 s-1 obtained in 2018 and hitherto held by CERN's LHC accelerator. In order to achieve high brightness, ...
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS
CRAB NEBULA OBSERVED BY THE FIRST TELESCOPES OF THE FUTURE CTA PROJECTS
Two successes for the new telescopes of the next generation CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) observatory, made possible by the technological solutions developed in particular by INFN and INAF, National Institute for Astrophysics. The pSCT telescope, a prototype of a Schwarzschild-Couder type telescope at the ...
FOCUS
LNGS, XENON1T OBSERVES AN UNEXPECTED EXCESS OF EVENTS: TRITIUM, SOLAR
AXIONS OR MAGNETIC MOMENT OF THE NEUTRINO?
On 17 June, during an online seminar hosted by the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS), XENON1T, one of the leading experiments in the direct search for dark matter, operating from 2016 to 2018 at the INFN LNGS, presented the analysis of its latest data, showing an unexpected excess of events. When the data of XENON1T, which contains 3.2 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid xenon, of which 2 tonnes are enclosed in the sensitive area of the detector, were compared with the expected background, an excess of 53 events was observed compared to the 232 expected. The excess is mainly present at low energy, below 7 keV, and is due to events evenly distributed in the sensitive volume of the detector and over the data acquisition period. The nature of this excess, which could also be due to a mere statistical fluctuation, is not yet fully understood because it has characteristics that make it compatible with various hypotheses. It could, in fact, be due to a minuscule presence of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen. ...
INFORMATION AND CONTACT
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Cover XENON1T at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories.
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