PEOPLE
THE ANTIMATTER HUNTER AMS-02 TURNS 10
Interview with Samuel Ting, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976 and AMS spokesperson.
Last May 19, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS-02, the largest particle detector operating in space, celebrated its 10th birthday. Hosted on the International Space Station (ISS), where it was transported and installed in 2011, the experiment is successfully continuing its scientific mission. The study of cosmic rays, the particles that are messengers of astrophysical phenomena in the Universe, is its main objective. On the occasion of this birthday, we talked to the father of this experiment, the Nobel Prize winner Samuel Ting, who is also the international spokesperson of the AMS-02 collaboration.
How was the project of building a great experiment on board of the International Space Station such as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer born?In the early 1990s, I was working in my garden, and I was thinking, I've been doing particle physics all my life maybe I should do something different, something I know nothing about. Then I remembered, many years ago I did an experiment that discovered the anti-deuteron (a particle made of an anti-proton and of an anti-neutron; ed. the antideuteron was discovered in 1965 independently by a team led by Antonino Zichichi at CERN and at by a team from Columbia University, where Samuel Ting was working, ...
NEWS
AWARDS
BOREXINO WINS THE PRESTIGIOUS 2021 COCCONI PRIZE
The EPS European Physical Society has awarded the prestigious 2021 Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize to the Borexino Scientific Collaboration. The important international prize, established in 2011 and awarded every two years for outstanding contributions to astroparticle physics and cosmology, has gone to the Borexino experiment at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories “for their ground-breaking observation of solar neutrinos from the pp chain and CNO cycle that ...
AGREEMENTS
THE STAR X-RAY SOURCE UPGRADE BEGINS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALABRIA
The University of Calabria and the INFN have signed a contractual agreement for the enhancement of the X-ray source of STAR, the University of Calabria’s research infrastructure dedicated to advanced materials analysis. The agreement is funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research in implementation of Action II.1 of the 2014-2020 National Operational Program for Research and Innovation. ...
RESEARCH AGREEMENTS
QUANTUM BITS IGNITE THE ENGINE OF INNOVATION
The University of Trento, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) have signed an agreement to share the Q@TN project in order to establish in Trento a reference centre for quantum research and technologies in Italy and in Europe and to build an ecosystem of quantum technologies that will drive innovation. The laboratory will cover the entire innovation chain, from university training to the development of new devices and the prototyping of systems ready for ...
TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH
I.FAST PAVES THE WAY FOR NEXT-GENERATION ACCELERATORS
I.FAST, the European programme dedicated to strengthening the integration between European laboratories engaged in research and development of particle accelerator technologies, was launched on 4th May 2021 during an online event. Coordinated by CERN, I.FAST will be funded by the European Commission with € 10 million for the next four years and will receive an important contribution from the INFN. ...
RESEARCH
IN THE POOL TO TEST JUNO'S ELECTRONICS
From 23rd to 25th May, researchers from the INFN division of Padua and the University of Padua successfully tested the data acquisition electronics of the JUNO (Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory) detector, a next-generation neutrino physics experiment under construction in southern China, in the Guangdong region. Carried out as part of the project to develop and build the detector’s ...
RESEARCH
DAMPE, A NEW PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF THE FLUX OF HIGH-ENERGY HELIUM NUCLEI IN COSMIC RAYS
The collaboration of the DAMPE (DArk Matter Particle Explorer) satellite experiment, with a major contribution from the INFN, has measured with unprecedented accuracy the flux of helium nuclei in cosmic rays up to very high energies (80 TeV). The result, which increases the accuracy of similar measurements made in the past by other space missions, was published on 18th May 2021 in Physical Review Letters (PRL).
TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH
COSMIC SILENCE MAKES QUANTUM COMPUTERS MORE POWERFUL
In the paper published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers from INFN and from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) tested the operation of a superconducting circuit in a quantum regime located in the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS), thus demonstrating that protecting a superconducting qubit from the effects of natural radioactivity significantly improves its performance. ...
RESEARCH
PREX-II DEMONSTRATES THE EXISTENCE OF THE NEUTRON SKIN IN LEAD NUCLEI
The existence of a neutron “skin” in heavy nuclei in which the number of neutrons exceeds the number of protons has recently been confirmed by a research published on Physical Review Letters on 28th April 2021 by the PREX-II collaboration, an experiment held at Jefferson Lab, the US research centre dedicated to particle physics, based in Virginia, whose members include INFN.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
AMEDEO BALBI WINS THE 2021 ASIMOV PRIZE WITH A JURY OF ALMOST 10,000 STUDENTS
L’ultimo orizzonte. Cosa sappiamo dell’universo. (The Last Horizon. What we know about the universe) by Amedeo Balbi is the most highly appreciated book by the thousands of students who made up the jury of the sixth edition of the ASIMOV Prize, the prize for the popularisation of science promoted by the INFN. ...
FOCUS
LHC: CERN APPROVES THE SDN@LHC EXPERIMENT
CERN in Geneva is opening up a new frontier in the search for dark matter and the study of neutrinos. A new experiment will operate on the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. CERN’s Research Board has approved the ninth experiment the ninth experiment that will use the Large Hadron Collider: SND@LHC, or Scattering and Neutrino Detector at the LHC, the new SND particle detector. Designed to detect and study neutrinos, SND@LHC will be installed 480m far from the collision point of the ATLAS experiment, at a very small angle to the beams’ direction of incidence. It will be installed in 2021 in an underground tunnel connecting the LHC to the Super Proton Synchrotron, and it will start recording data in 2022 when the LHC will restart. With a volume of roughly 2 m3, the experimental apparatus has the ambitious goal of concentrating into such a compact volume the equipment needed to carry out all the measurements required to identify neutrinos and to study their properties. ...
TAKE PART IN
PHYSICS ON THE WAVES: THE PHYSICS OF ENERGY TOLD TO CHILDREN BY CHILDREN
Physics on the waves is a new series of 10 physics videos for children (6-13 years old) made by the INFN in collaboration with Shibumi. A family at sea. About 3 minutes long, the videos will be broadcasted on the INFN YouTube and Facebook channels from 3rd June to 5th August every Thursday at 10.00 am. The storytellers are Timo (4 years old), Nina (9 years old) and Iago (12 years old) who have been travelling for almost a year on an energy self-sufficient sailing boat, called Shibumi. This series of videos will talk about energy, where it comes from, how it is measured, how it is transformed and how it is consumed. A parallel between life on board and life on land told by children to children with some intervention of their dad, Stefano Barberis, a physicist from the INFN section in Milan.(in Italian)
Facebook (in Italian)
June 8, 4 pm A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN: VISIT TO THE INFN NATIONAL GRAN SASSO LABORATORIES
On Tuesday 8 June at 4:00 pm, the INFN National Laboratories of Gran Sasso (LNGS) will open their doors to the public to accompany them on a virtual journey inside the largest operational underground research center in the world.
The visit to the Laboratories will be introduced by the Director Ezio Previtali and then conducted by Paolo Gorla, LNGS researcher, who will illustrate the leading researches that constitute a window on understanding the Universe. A "question and answer" session will conclude the visit.
It will be possible to access the virtual visit, live, on the Facebook page of the Gran Sasso National Laboratories - INFN. (in Italian)
Facebook
INFORMATION AND CONTACT
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AMS-2, Credit: NASA
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