Due to the detection on Earth of gravitational waves produced by cosmological events, such as the merger of black holes or neutron stars, that occurred eons ago at incomprehensible distances, astronomers are able to study the history of the universe dating back to almost the big bang. This is what the Einstein Telescope, Sardinia's future large international research infrastructure, will enable at the Sos Enattos site in Lula, Nuoro province. Giorgia Meloni, President of the Council of Ministers, and ministers Anna Maria Bernini, Marina Elvira Calderone, Antonio Tajani, and Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano presented the project yesterday in Rome. The event was also attended by Antonio Zoccoli, president of INFN, and Giorgio Parisi, Nobel Prize in Physics and president of the scientific committee for the Italian candidacy Giorgio Parisi. Instead of observing the universe, the Einstein Telescope will listen to it. Gravitational waves are, in fact, an echo of the astrophysical events that generated them. Einstein predicted them over a century ago, which is why Einstein Telescope was named in his honor, as a consequence of his theory of general relativity. On September 14, 2015, the LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaborations observed them for the first time using the LIGO interferometers. They are tiny oscillations, vibrations of space-time, that is, of our universe's four-dimensional structure (three spatial dimensions plus the temporal dimension). The Einstein Telescope will be ten times more sensitive than current interferometers, allowing us to observe nearly all black hole and neutron star mergers in our universe, as well as previously unseen astrophysical phenomena such as supernova explosions.
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