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Researchers from the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (UV-CSIC) and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (UB) publish in Nature Physics the first study of the density of the planet in which they use this elementary particle, the neutrino. The method is analogous to an X-ray photograph or a CT scan. A similar technique was recently used to discover a hidden camera in the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.
Researchers from the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC-Universitat de València) and the University of Barcelona publish today in Nature Physics the first CT of the Earth in which they use neutrinos. This elementary particle, one of the most abundant in the Universe, is able to cross the planet without flinching, so it can provide valuable information about the distribution of its density, especially in little-known areas such as the inner core. Scientists have also used neutrinos for the first time to measure other properties of the Earth, such as its mass, and have obtained results consistent with traditional geophysical methods. The study uses data from the IceCube experiment, the largest neutrino telescope in the world located in Antarctica.
Figure 1.Andrea Donini, Jordi Salvadó, Sergio Palomares
Neutrinos are the only known particles that can cross the Earth. This is possible because they hardly interact with ordinary matter, which we see in the Universe and which makes up our planet and ourselves. That is why it is said that the neutrino is the 'phantom particle', and huge detectors are required to trap them. IceCube uses a cubic kilometre of ice from the South Pole to capture the neutrinos with more energy known, some of which come from the most extreme phenomena of the cosmos such as black holes or supernovas.
The neutrinos that have more energy are partially absorbed by the materials that make up the Earth, in a proportion already established by the international scientific collaboration that operates the IceCube experiment. Now, the researchers of the Institute of Corpuscular Physics Andrea Donini, Sergio Palomares and Jordi Salvadó, currently at the Institute of Cosmetology Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), have linked these absorption rates with approximately 20,000 high-energy neutrinos produced by the collision of cosmic rays in the atmosphere, known as atmospheric neutrinos, detected by IceCube in 2011. With them they have developed the first study of the density of the planet in which this elementary particle has been used.
| “The use of atmospheric neutrinos allows us to have neutrinos coming from all directions, with a wide range of energy and a known flux with enough precision. The amount of absorption of the flux of atmospheric neutrinos depends both on the amount of material traversed and on the energy of the neutrinos, so that by studying the variation of the amount of absorption in different directions for neutrinos of different energy, we can determine the density distribution of Earth”, explains Sergio Palomares, researcher Ramón y Cajal of the CSIC in the Institute of Corpuscular Physics. |
“The use of atmospheric neutrinos allows us to have neutrinos coming from all directions, with a wide range of energy and a known flux with enough precision. The amount of absorption of the flux of atmospheric neutrinos depends both on the amount of material traversed and on the energy of the neutrinos, so that by studying the variation of the amount of absorption in different directions for neutrinos of different energy, we can determine the density distribution of Earth”, explains Sergio Palomares, researcher Ramón y Cajal of the CSIC in the Institute of Corpuscular Physics.
The density of the Earth is traditionally calculated by measuring the propagation velocity of seismic waves produced by earthquakes. These data make up the geophysical models that establish values for the density, elasticity, pressure or gravity of our planet. Although this method has a lot of data (100,000 earthquakes “useful” to be studied are produced every year), seismic waves bounce off the surface that separates the inner core (solid) and outer core (liquid). “Neutrinos, on the other hand, go through it all, and offer valuable information about the unknown nucleus of the Earth, where the magnetism of the planet is generated”, says Andrea Donini, Scientific Researcher of the CSIC at the IFIC.
The idea of using neutrinos to study the interior of the planet is not new. Almost half a century ago, a method was proposed to do it using neutrinos created in particle accelerators. Recently, a similar technique was used to discover a room hidden inside the pyramid of Cheops using atmospheric muons, some ‘relatives’ of the neutrino. But until the launch of IceCube in 2010 there was no instrument capable of detecting high energy neutrinos that cross the Earth in sufficient quantity to carry out this study.
The work published today shows how neutrinos can be used to study the structure of the interior of the planet, but the data used is still scarce to compete in accuracy with other geophysical techniques. The researchers hope to access the data set obtained by the IceCube collaboration from 2011 until now, which will improve the accuracy of the results, both in the mantle and in the terrestrial nucleus. And the prospects for this new technique improve with the entry into play of KM3NeT, a new neutrino telescope that is built in the Mediterranean, where the IFIC leads the Spanish participation. With this new experiment neutrinos will be detected in both hemispheres, which allows a more accurate image of the interior of the Earth using this elusive particle.
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IFIC and ICCUB scientists carry out the first Earth tomograp
From the 22nd to the 26th ofOctober the course “ICCUB School: Protoplanetary Disks in Young StellarObjects” was held at ICCUB.
The event took place at the Physics faculty of the University of Barcelona. The lectures were given by many renowned professors. Maite Beltrán, from the INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri; Álvaro Sánchez-Monge from the Physikalisches Institut of the University of Cologne; or José Maria Torrelles, from the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, CSIC-IEEC; were the lecturers of the course among others. The topics addressed in this edition ranged from Star formation process to Cosmic rays.
About thirty students from different countries such as Germany or Chile participated in the course, but most of the students study the Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Cosmology master, also held at the Physics faculty.
Besides the theoretical lectures, the course also included practical works. The ALMA Observing Tool and the CASA Tutorial weretwo of the programs that the ICCUB School participants learned to use.
This is the 3rd edition of the course and due to the level of the lecturers and the interest that is awakening among students, it isconsolidating as one of the strong courses of the Institute.
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The 3rd Edition of the ICCUB School was held last week at th
The 26th International Conference on Atomic Physics, ICAP 2018, was held from July 22 – 27, 2018 in Barcelona.Following the tradition of ICAP, the conference presented an outstanding programme of invited speakers, including six physics Nobel prizes, covering the most important developments in the field of atomic physics.
The interview they participated in, conducted by ICCUB researcher Bruno Julià, is now available in digital platforms as Youtube.Watch the full interview here.
The nobel panel was composed by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, NP 1997, for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light; William D. Phillips, NP 1997, For development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light; Wolfgang Ketterle, NP 2001, for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates; Roy J. Glauber, NP 2005, for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence; Theodor W. Hänsch, NP 2005, for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique and Serge Haroche, NP 2012, for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.
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Nobel Prize interview during ICAP conference now available i
A team led by researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB, UB-IEEC) and the University of Groningen has found, through the analysis of Gaia data, substructures which were unknown so far in the Milky Way. The findings, which appeared when combining positions and speed of 6 million stars from our galaxy’s disk, have been published in the journal Nature.
“We have observed shapes with different morphologies, such as a spiral similar to a snail’s shell. The existence of these substructures has been observed for the first time thanks to the unprecedented precision of the data brought by Gaia satellite, from the European Space Agency (ESA)”, says Teresa Antoja, researcher at ICCUB (IEEC-UB) and first signer of the article. “These substructures –she adds- allow us to conclude that the disk of our galaxy suffered an important gravitational disturbance about 300 and 900 million years ago”. This is one of the great first findings of “Galactic archaeology” following the publication of the Gaia data that should allow researchers find out about the origin and evolution of the Milky Way.
CREDIT: Teresa Antoja
Figure 1.This animation shows altitude of the stars above/below the Galactic plane against their vertical velocity comparing the Gaia data from the first data release (DR1, 2016) and the RAVE survey with data entirely from the second Gaia data release (DR2, 2018). A snail shell shape that was previously blurred by measurement errors appears now.
What caused this disturbance? To answer this question, the researchers compared the structure and level of twisting of the spiral with models of the dynamics of the Galaxy. As the researchers explain, this allowed them to formulate the hypothesis that the disturbance was caused by the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy passing near the Milky Way disk.
| “The study implies, definitely, that our galaxy’s disk is dynamically young, sensitive to disturbances and changing over time”, says Antoja. “One of the most distinguishable forms we saw –continues the researcher- is the spiral pattern of the stars near the Sun, and which had never been seen before. Actually, the observed shapes in the graphics were that clear (unlike common cases), that we thought it could be a mistake in the data”, says Antoja. In this sense, more than a hundred European engineers and scientists, among which the Gaia UB team played a distinguished role, worked during months on the verification and validation tasks of the Gaia data. As part of this task, Mercè Romero Gómez, UB researcher, says that “with the simulations carried out at the UB we could also reproduce the observed spirals”. |
According to Amina Helmi, researcher at the University of Groningen, “we know our Galaxy is ‘cannibal’ and has grown while eating other small galaxies, like it is doing now with the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy”. Nonetheless, the expert notes that “the mass of Sagittarius is still large enough to cause a notable gravitational impact”. What we see now does not respond to a collision between galaxies but Sagittarius getting closer to the galactic disk.
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First results of the new Gaia release
The data analysed in this study is part of the second Gaia release, which was published some months ago, on April 25, 2018. “Scientists and engineers of the UB played an essential role in making these data a reality”, says Xavier Luri, director of ICCUB and coordinator of the team that built the Gaia archive. The effort of more than four hundred scientists and engineers allowed publishing positions and precise movements for more than 1,300 million objects. This second catalogue –which embraces the first twenty-two months of data gathering- published the first spectroscopic data for some million stars in the solar surroundings, which allow researchers to measure the speed of the stars in our line of sight and obtain, therefore, the three velocity coordinates of the stars. These data have enabled the discovery that has been now published in Nature.
Now, the Gaia satellite cumulates more than 48 months of successful operations and ESA has approved of prolonging the mission until late 2020. ESA is now assessing a second two-year prorogue. According to Carme Jordi, UB researcher and member of Gaia Science Team, the scientific advisory body in ESA for this mission, “everything suggests this is only one of the first discoveries of a wide series of new findings –and surprises- hidden in the Gaia data which were published on April: the tip of the iceberg in the study of the origins and the evolution of the galaxy in which we are”.
More material from the Nature article
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Gaia ICCUB team detects a shake in the Milky Way
The Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) of the University of Barcelona has signed an agreement with the company Scientifica International to work together in the fields of nuclear and particle physics, space sciences and industry. This generic agreement, managed through the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation of the UB, sets the bases for future collaborations between the ICCUB and Scientifica. ICCUB therefore becomes the Scientifica International technological partner and will be its advanced design unit.
Scientifica will study how to bring the developments that are carried out at ICCUB into the market, especially instrumentation, electronics and application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). Both units will collaborate in high technology projects and will enter competitions in international organizations such as the European Space Agency (ESA), CERN and ITER.
One of the first licensed products for its trade is the Multi-purpose Integrated Circuit (eMUSIC), carried out at ICCUB. Although it was originally designed for the future telescope Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), eMUSIC can be used for other applications, such as medical imaging, spectrometers, radiation detectors like synchrotrons and particle accelerators.
eMUSIC is an integrated circuit that can expand, process and join the signs that arrive from a high-speed photomultiplier array in a wide dynamic range, which enables developing compact and low-power systems.
The Matrix electronic device, with an analogical-digital conversion function for high-precision time measurement, has also been licensed for its commercialization. This device has been applied to the improvement of the precision in positron emission tomography (PET), used in medical diagnoses.
The area of electronics of the ICCUB Technological Unit (ICCUB-Tech) has worked on six different designs over the last years, producing more than 100.000 units and it now has five patents in the field of photodetectors.
About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences
ICCUB is a UB research center, created in 2006 and distinguished with the accreditation of excellence Maria de Maeztu in 2015. It is also one of the four units that build the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).
The center is dedicated to the fundamental research in the field of cosmology and particle physics, and cosmos sciences technological applications in general.
ICCUB-Tech has expert engineers on instrumentation, electronics and big data management who had worked in several research groups so far, fields in which technology is a key element: mainly for space missions, telescopes, and particle detectors and accelerators.
Another example of an ICCUB project is the application of a data compression algorithm, developed within the framework of the Gaia project, and to fields of genomics, marine geosciences and new nanosatellites to study the Earth.
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ICCUB becomes a Scientifica International technological part
From the 22nd to the 27th July, Barcelona will hold the 26th International Conference of Atomic Physics, ICAP20018, the most important conference on atomic physics worldwide which gathers scientists from around the world and will gather six Nobel laureates.
Organized by the University of Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the conference will take place in the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya (Palace of Congresses) and will gather international experts, who will share results and views on atomic physics, focusing on topics such as computing and quantum communication, intense fields and ultrafast science, among other issues.
The first ICAP conference was held in 1968 and since then, it has become one of the most known conferences worldwide. Every two years, participants have the chance to share and debate on new findings that are carried out in the field of atomic physics, a research field which has evolved in an unexpected way and opens a new world regarding the understanding of the atomic structure, the generation of laser light, the development of cooling and trapping techniques for atoms and ions, as well as the achievement of Bose Einstein condensation and degenerated Fermi gases, among others.
According to the organizers of the conference, Maciej Lewenstein (ICFO), Veronica Ahufinger (UAB) and Bruno Julià-Díaz (ICCUB), “ICAP is the most important conference regarding atomic physics. The debated results in this activity represent la crème de crème in current research, both regarding fundamental frontiers and technological challenges”.
As an activity to carry out before the conference during this week, the Faculty of Physics is holding the ICAP Summer School 2018, with a hundred PhD students and young researchers from around the world, in which experts from the field of atomic physics such as the Nobel laureate in physics William D. Phillips or the researcher from the Max Plank Institute (Germany) Ignacio Cirac will participate.
Organized by the University of Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the conference will take place in the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya (Palace of Congresses) and will gather international experts, who will share results and views on atomic physics, focusing on topics such as computing and quantum communication, intense fields and ultrafast science, among other issues.
The first ICAP conference was held in 1968 and since then, it has become one of the most known conferences worldwide. Every two years, participants have the chance to share and debate on new findings that are carried out in the field of atomic physics, a research field which has evolved in an unexpected way and opens a new world regarding the understanding of the atomic structure, the generation of laser light, the development of cooling and trapping techniques for atoms and ions, as well as the achievement of Bose Einstein condensation and degenerated Fermi gases, among others.
According to the organizers of the conference, Maciej Lewenstein (ICFO), Veronica Ahufinger (UAB) and Bruno Julià-Díaz (ICCUB), “ICAP is the most important conference regarding atomic physics. The debated results in this activity represent la crème de crème in current research, both regarding fundamental frontiers and technological challenges”.
As an activity to carry out before the conference during this week, the Faculty of Physics is holding the ICAP Summer School 2018, with a hundred PhD students and young researchers from around the world, in which experts from the field of atomic physics such as the Nobel laureate in physics William D. Phillips or the researcher from the Max Plank Institute (Germany) Ignacio Cirac will participate.
This year, at the same time the central conference takes place, ICAP is organizing two special events for the conference attendants and the audience:
Roundtable with six Nobel laureates
The first activity will take place on Tuesday, July 24 at 6 p.m. and will count on the participation of six Nobel laureates, who will share their views on the field’s trends, recent achievements and future discoveries. The Nobel laureates to attend this session are:
- Claude Cohen-Tannoudji: NP in 1997 for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light,
- William D. Phillips: NP in 1997 together with Cohen-Tannoudji for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light
- Wolfgang Ketterle: NP in 2001 for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates
- Roy J. Glauber: NP in 2005 for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence
- Theodor W . Hänsch: NP in 2005 for his contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique
- Serge Haroche: NP in 2012 for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems
Presentation of the new International System of Units
The second activity will take place on July 26 at 7.30 p.m. and will count on the presence of Nobel laureates William Phillips and Vanderlei Bagnato, who will present the new International System of Units (SI). In this new metrics system to be applied in 2019, four of the units we use (kilogram, ampere, kelvin and mole) will be redefined in terms of nature physical constants, based on fixed numerical values of the Plank constant (h), the elementary charge (e), the Boltzmann constant (kB), and the Avogadro constant (NA), respectively.
In the conference, speakers will explain the meaning and importance of this change and will show how these definitions will be put into practice. This second event is made possible thanks to the Ignacio Cirac – Fundació Catalunya – La Pedrera Chair in ICFO and Cellex Foundation.
This news has been written by the department of communication of the UB
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Six Nobel laureates in the International Conference on Atomi
MAGIC telescopes have identified the origins of a cosmic neutrino for the first time. Astrophysicists have found the source of a cosmic neutrino coming from outside the Milky Way. It is likely for the neutrino to come from a blazar, an active black hole in the center of a distant galaxy in Orion. To achieve this, researchers combined a detected sign from the observatory of neutrinos in the Southern Hemisphere, IceCube, with the telescopes Fermi-LAT and MAGIC. Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB took part in this research, which could provide more views to solve a mystery: the origins of primary radiation and has been published in Science.
Neutrinos are particles that do not interact with our surroundings. Although these are hard to detect, neutrinos are important cosmic messengers since they bring exceptional information on the areas where these are created.
“Although we can detect a great amount of neutrinos with current technology, a big part of these have atmospheric origins and energy below 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV). Actually, the number of high-energy neutrinos is not higher than seven per year. However, the estimation of their origins is not good in general, and it is hard to identify potential objects in the sky. In this case, the estimation was right, and it coincided with an erupting blazer which can be identified as a potential electromagnetic counterpart”, say Marc Ribó and Josep M. Paredes, researchers at ICCUB in the MAGIC telescope collaboration.
The main specialized detector to identify these elusive particles is IceCube, located in the South Pole. This observatory detects around 200 neutrinos per day, but most of those are low-energy and produced by cosmic rays that interact with the terrestrial atmosphere.
A neutrino that unchained multi-messenger observations
On September 22, 2017, IceCube detected a different neutrino, its high energy (about 290 TeV) showed that the particle could have appeared in a faraway sky object. Scientists could also determine its direction with high precision.
Fermi-LAT, a space observatory which studies the whole sky, noted that the direction of the neutrino was alienated with an active gamma ray source (high energy photons): the TXS 0506+056 blazar. Also, the 17-meter MAGIC telescopes, which detect high-energy gamma rays from Earth, found that radiation of the blazar reached energies of at least 0,5 TeV.
These findings, together with the direction of the neutrino, make the blazar a potential candidate for the neutrino source. TXS 0506+056 is a galaxy active nucleus, at a 4,500 million year light distance from the Earth. It has a supermassive blackhole emitting a flow of particles and energetic radiation that move at the speed of light, known as jets.
The creation of neutrinos is always related to proton interactions, observations can help solving the origins of cosmic radiation, found by the physicist Victor Hess in 1912.
MAGIC telescopes
Neutrinos are particles that do not interact with our surroundings. Although these are hard to detect, neutrinos are important cosmic messengers since they bring exceptional information on the areas where these are created.
“Although we can detect a great amount of neutrinos with current technology, a big part of these have atmospheric origins and energy below 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV). Actually, the number of high-energy neutrinos is not higher than seven per year. However, the estimation of their origins is not good in general, and it is hard to identify potential objects in the sky. In this case, the estimation was right, and it coincided with an erupting blazer which can be identified as a potential electromagnetic counterpart”, say Marc Ribó and Josep M. Paredes, researchers at ICCUB in the MAGIC telescope collaboration.
The main specialized detector to identify these elusive particles is IceCube, located in the South Pole. This observatory detects around 200 neutrinos per day, but most of those are low-energy and produced by cosmic rays that interact with the terrestrial atmosphere.
A neutrino that unchained multi-messenger observations
On September 22, 2017, IceCube detected a different neutrino, its high energy (about 290 TeV) showed that the particle could have appeared in a faraway sky object. Scientists could also determine its direction with high precision.
Fermi-LAT, a space observatory which studies the whole sky, noted that the direction of the neutrino was alienated with an active gamma ray source (high energy photons): the TXS 0506+056 blazar. Also, the 17-meter MAGIC telescopes, which detect high-energy gamma rays from Earth, found that radiation of the blazar reached energies of at least 0,5 TeV.
These findings, together with the direction of the neutrino, make the blazar a potential candidate for the neutrino source. TXS 0506+056 is a galaxy active nucleus, at a 4,500 million year light distance from the Earth. It has a supermassive blackhole emitting a flow of particles and energetic radiation that move at the speed of light, known as jets.
The creation of neutrinos is always related to proton interactions, observations can help solving the origins of cosmic radiation, found by the physicist Victor Hess in 1912.
MAGIC telescopes
MAGIC Cherenkov telescopes are in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma, Canary Islands). The Spanish community has taken part in MAGIC since its beginnings in the following public research centers: the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC), the Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), University of Barcelona (UB) and the Complutense University of Madrid. Also, the MAGIC data center is the Scientific Information Port (PIC), collaboration between IFAE and the Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT).
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MAGIC telescopes identify the origins of a cosmic neutrino
The Institute of Cosmos Sciences has joined the Virgo Collaboration, becoming part of the group of outstanding centres involved in this project. As Virgo is one of the largest physics experiments and an observatory in the field of gravitation, this fact becomes a great opportunity for ICCUB to contribute to expand the knowledge about gravitational waves.
The agreement, which will be revised in one year from now, involves four researchers from our institution. The commitment of ICCUB for this first year is to provide support on software development and optimization, massive data processing tools and data transfer and archival strategies, in which the team has remarkable expertise owing to the participation in other projects such as the Gaia mission or the Large Hadron Collider LHCb experiment. This agreement has the purpose of facilitating prompt and reliable alerts on gravitational wave events and to improve the usage of the computational resources of the project.
Virgo is a large Michelson interferometer, with 3 km arms, designed to detect gravitational waves predicted by the general theory of relativity. It is part of the global network of gravitational waves observatories, which currently includes the two LIGO detectors in the US and Virgo. After the first detection of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015, and the first event detected by the 3 observatories in 2017, Virgo has moved from the experimental to the observational stage. In 17 August 2017, the era of multi-messenger astronomy was born, with the first ever detection of an astronomical event both in gravitational waves and in the electromagnetic spectrum. Virgo is a scientific collaboration of laboratories from six countries: Italy, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Spain.
The agreement, which will be revised in one year from now, involves four researchers from our institution. The commitment of ICCUB for this first year is to provide support on software development and optimization, massive data processing tools and data transfer and archival strategies, in which the team has remarkable expertise owing to the participation in other projects such as the Gaia mission or the Large Hadron Collider LHCb experiment. This agreement has the purpose of facilitating prompt and reliable alerts on gravitational wave events and to improve the usage of the computational resources of the project.
Virgo is a large Michelson interferometer, with 3 km arms, designed to detect gravitational waves predicted by the general theory of relativity. It is part of the global network of gravitational waves observatories, which currently includes the two LIGO detectors in the US and Virgo. After the first detection of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015, and the first event detected by the 3 observatories in 2017, Virgo has moved from the experimental to the observational stage. In 17 August 2017, the era of multi-messenger astronomy was born, with the first ever detection of an astronomical event both in gravitational waves and in the electromagnetic spectrum. Virgo is a scientific collaboration of laboratories from six countries: Italy, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Spain.
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ICCUB is now part of the Virgo collaboration
The Collaboration between ICCUB and Sonar festival has attracted the attention of many outstanding publications and media. One of those has been the Technological and IT trends magazine ZDNet, who published a whole article discussing the topic titled “Do aliens feel the beat? Music sent into space for extraterrestrials to decode”.
The IT magazine also interviewed Jordi Portell, ICCUB member, to go into details about the project. It is called Sonar Calling and consists on sending music pieces from the festival into space, with the aim that they will arrive to exoplanet Luyten Star b, wich is potentially habitable. They send it in digital format using a large radiofrequency antenna located at EISCAT facilities in Tromso. As Portell highlighted during the interview “Whether the message arrives or not, at least it has been an effective way to make space technology available to the Sónar audience. In fact, it's a scientific dissemination project".
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ICCUB collaboration with Sonar festival appears in ZDNet tec
The city council of Barcelona has launched a new program to endorse innovation and research.
Barcelona aim to be an European capital of research and innovation. In order to accomplish this goal, Barcelona will roll out the plan through collaboration and agreements between research institutes, universities, etc. among which is the Institute of Cosmos Sciences.
The programme is attached to this news.
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Barcelona Science Plan to become an European capital in rese