Què tenen a veure els acceleradors de partícules amb la lluita contra el càncer o la caracterització d'obres d'art? I el llenguatge amb què ens comuniquem per Internet o els sistemes d'encriptació per al comerç electrònic amb les partícules subatòmiques?

Aquestes són algunes de les aplicacions de la física que s’expliquen a "La física a les nostres vides" , una exposició itinerant en què es mostren al públic els principals beneficis i desenvolupaments tecnològics sorgits de la recerca bàsica.

"La física a les nostres vides", ha estat produïda pel Centre Nacional de Física de Partícules, Astropartícules i Nuclear (CPAN) i arriba a Catalunya mitjançant l'Institut de Ci[encies del Cosmos (ICCUB). La mostra, es podrà visitar a l'Atri Solar de la Facultat de Física (Diagonal, 645) des del 14 de gener fins a l'11 de març.

This project impulsed by the city council, and other research institutions such as UB, UPC, University of Florida, and the "Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya", aims at producing scientific and comercial applications with the help of satellite and microsatellite technology.

While scanning the sky to measure the positions and movements of stars in our Galaxy, Gaia has discovered a supernova, called Gaia 14aaa, in a galaxy located about 500 million light years away.

The sudden rise in the galaxy brightness detected between one observation on August 30th and another one made one month before, indicated the possibility of a supernova. This galaxy showed a 6 factor change of its brightness.

Position measurements were made to corroborate the hypothesis that it was a supernova and to reject the option of outbursts caused by the mass-devouring supermassive black hole at the galaxy centre. The position of the bright spot of light was slightly offset from the galaxy’s core, suggesting that it was unlikely to be related to a central black hole. The astronomers analysed the light spectrum to seek signatures of various chemical elements typical of those kind of phenomenon. Complementary observations were made with terrestrial Telescopes such as the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the Liverpool Telescope, both placed at La Palma Island. All information confirmed that the phenomenon was a supernova and also indicated its nature: a Type Ia supernova, correspondent to the explosion of a white dwarf locked in a binary system with a companion star.

It was just the first discovery of the many that will occur during the next 5 years of the mission.

Up to date, it was only possible to infer this distance through theoretical calculus which incorporate Einstein's general relativity theory. This first direct measurement obtained does not involve such theory, just some basic ideas about symmetries and the expansion of the universe, which are enough for modelizing the clear physics of the universe at very early stages.
For making the measurement, researchers have based on observations of supernova's intensity and also on the mass distribution (accoustic baryonic oscillations) of the universe.

Making direct measurements is of primordial importance in cosmology, since these will remain true evethough theories can change over time.

During this first year Gaia has already observed 12.0000 transits corresponding to 10.000 gigabytes of data, and its velocity spectrograph has obtained more spectra than the total number compiled in the whole history of astronomy.
The components of the satellite have behaved pretty well and more precise measurements than expected have been achieved.

The members of ICCUB involved in the Gaia mission have been present since the beginning. They have been responsible for the construction of some of its instruments as well as for the data analysis during the first stage of the mission.

Everything suggests that if the satellite keeps working that well, passed the 5 years of duration of this mission, Gaia could provide the world with the most extense catalogue of the Milky Way ever made.