The Spanish academic and research network that provides advanced communications services to the national scientific and university community, RedIRIS, collaborates with Gaia space mission with a network infrastructure based on Optical fiber, interconnected to the pan-European academic network GEANT, that allows the global transmission of all the information generated by the project.

Currently Gaia's biggest challenge is the compilation and processing of the huge amount of information produced. Every day the satellite generates and sends to the Earth 50 gigabytes data, received by 3 antennas, one of them located in Cebreros, Ávila, that must be processed.

RedIRIS highlights, for this final phase, the role of the researchers of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona, ICCUB, that deal with the simulations and the construction of the data archive collaborating with the University Services of Catalonia (CSUC) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The ICCUB has worked in the mission since its beginning, contributing to define some elements of the satellite and of the software for data processing.

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A team of researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH, USA), and the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB), detected the first naked-eye solar superflare in Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. The obtained results limit the habitability of the Proxima b exoplanet, orbited by this star.

A solar flare is a phenomenon causing an increase in the brightness of a star due its magnetic activity. For Proxima Centauri, another star activating the Sun, these flares emit lethal amounts of UV radiation and charged particles, such as protons, that can destroy the ozone (O3) of Proxima b’s atmosphere. This research study, published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters, states that “the temporary distribution of these solar super flares takes place at least about five times per year, which means the 90 % of the O₃ of Proxima b would disappear in five years, and the rest would be removed at scales of 100,000 years”, says Octavi Fors (ICCUB, UCN-CH, RACAB), one of the authors of the study.

“Since Proxima b does not have O₃ , and the UV radiation level is about a hundred times more intense than the one the most resistant microorganism can bear, the kind of life in the surface of the planet is very limited. This would suit only extremely UV radiation-resistant organisms”, says Daniel del Ser (ICCUB, UNC-CH, RACAB), co-author of the study. “In fact –the researcher continues- those ways of life that are not protected under a surface (such an ocean) would hardly survive in a planet that is exposed to these kind of violent ultraviolet emissions”.

Data obtained from the Evryscope telescope, which conducts observations on the entire visible sky every two minutes. This solar super flare was observed in March 2016, when Proxima Centauri was seventy times brighter and therefore was easily seen.

At the same time the Evryscope observations were conducted, the HARPS high resolution spectrograph analysed the visible spectrum of the solar flare to determine, among other reasons, the existence of a coronal mass ejection. Also, the photochemical effects of the atmospheric compounds produced by the extreme stellar activity were modelled.

Article reference:

Ward S. Howard, Matt A. Tilley, Hank Corbett, Allison Youngblood, R. O. Parke Loyd, Jeffrey K. Ratzloff, Nicholas M. Law, Octavi Fors, Daniel del Ser, Evgenya L. Shkolnik, Carl Ziegler, Erin E. Goeke, Aaron D. Pietraallo, Joshua Haislip. “The first naked-eye superflare detected from Proxima Centauri”. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 860:L30, June, 2018.

This article has been writen by the UB news.

The ICCUB has signed an agreement with Scientifica International, S.L.U to cooperate in the areas of nuclear and particle physics, space sciences and industry for science. This general agreement sets the bases for future collaborations between the ICCUB and Scientifica, and has a twofold objective. First, Scientifica will contribute to the commercialization of products developed at ICCUB, in particular, instrumentation, electronics and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Secondly, both units will cooperate in highly complex technological projects and will apply together in research and development calls from funding organizations such as the European Space Agency, CERN or ITER.

With the signing of this general agreement the relationship of the ICCUB with Scientifica will be reinforced. For instance, a license agreement has already been signed between Fundació Bosch i Gimpera (the technology transfer office of the University of Barcelona) and Scientifica to commercialize an enhanced Multi-purpose Integrated Circuit ( eMUSIC ) developed at ICCUB. The circuit sum signals received from a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array at high speed, high dynamic range and low noise working at a lower voltage. Originally designed for future upgrades of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), eMUSIC can in fact be used in many other scientific and industry applications, like medical imaging, spectrophotometers, fluorescence microscopy, telescopes, radiation detection, and synchrotron and particle accelerators. The technology has been patented by the University of Barcelona and is now patent pending in Europe and the United States.