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 Lula, was presented today in Rome by the Italian Government, with the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani. With them the ministers of University and Research Anna Maria Bernini, of Labor and Social Policies Marina Elvira Calderone, the undersecretary to the presidency of the Council Alfredo Mantovano, the Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi and the governor of Sardinia, Christian Solinas.
With the Government and the Ministry of Research, the candidacy is supported by the 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 Nuoro area, is in competition 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 has 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, 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. 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 worldwide, what Cern 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 the University 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.
SOLINAS, READY FOR A MAJOR ALLOCATION – The Sardinia Region is willing to make an important investment for the Einstein Telescope because the most powerful gravitational wave detector in the world “will put Sardinia and Italy at the center of international scientific attention”: said the president of the Sardinia Region, Christian Solinas, during the presentation of the Italian candidacy for the Einstein Telescope. “We are willing to make an important allocation to create networks of national and international academic and research institutions, with the help of scientific diplomacy”, said Solinas again, thanking all those who are working on “a project which, alone, Sardinia could not have faced”. The construction of the Einstein Telescope, he added, could be part of the “great process of reconversion of our entire mining system: it consolidates an alternative development model that allows us to say that the repopulation of inland areas can pass through investments in science” .