Italy is officially a candidate to host the Einstein Telescope, the most powerful gravitational wave hunter ever built. The candidacy of the Sos Enattos site in Sardinia was presented in Rome by the Italian government with the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. With them the Ministers of University and Research Anna Maria Bernini, Labor and Social Policies Marina Elvira Calderone, the undersecretary to the presidency of the Council Alfredo Mantovano, the Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi and the governor of Sardinia, Christian Solinas.
Einstein Telescope
“I wanted to offer with my presence the attention, the will, the dedication that the Italian government intends to put on Italy's candidacy to host the'Einstein Telescope, I wanted this intention to be clear”. So the premier, underlining that "the meaning of this candidacy is the symbol of an Italy that wants to look upwards, means we are capable of great enterprises, because we have already done it many times". With the Government and the Ministry of Research, the candidacy is supported by Sardinia Region and scientifically coordinated by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in collaboration with research institutions and universities throughout Italy.
The Italian site in the area of the former metal mine of Sos Enattos, in the north-east of Sardinia, it competes with the Dutch site which is located on the border between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Funded with 50 million euros from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Einstein Telescope project made it possible to identify in the area of the former mine the ideal place to host the new gravitational wave detector due to the low seismic noise. This is due to the fact that Sardinia is not connected to the most active tectonic zones and therefore is not affected by seismic phenomena and deformation of the earth's crust.
A project financed with Pnrr funds
It is estimated that the total cost of the new research infrastructure, which could be built in six to nine years, will be 1,9 billion euros. Of these, 5 are earmarked for the project, 171 for preparation, 1,7 billion for implementation and 37 million a year for activity. The Einstein Telescope could become, in Europe and in the world, what the Cern it is for particle physics, with at least 1.400 people active within it, coming from 23 countries and 221 research institutes. As for the economic repercussions, a study by theUniversity of Sassari estimates that every euro spent on the Einstein Telescope will generate 3.2 euros and an increase in GDP of 1,6 euros.
(Einstein Telescope official page images)
