Italy has officially joined the contest to host the Einstein Telescope, the most powerful instrument ever built to capture gravitational waves, able to reach almost as far back as the Big Bang that created the universe. The official bid,for the site of Sos Enattos, in Sardinia, was presented by Premier Giorgia Meloni.
"I wanted to offer with my presence the attention, the will, the dedication that the Italian government intends to put into Italy's candidature to host the Einstein Telescope, I wanted this will to be clear", she said in presenting the bid with competent ministers.
Hosting this unprecedented instrument is “for science a huge leap forward in our ability to understand the cosmos, and for politics it is a way to make Italian and European research central again,” she added.
The bid is supported by the Italian government, with the ministry for research, and the Sardinian regional government, and it is led on a scientific basis by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in collaboration with university and research bodies from across Italy.
Italy will certainly have to face “tough competition”, said Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, referring to the Dutch bid to host the instrument. One thing militating in favour of the Italian site in the former metal mining area of Sos Enattos is its silence. It is in fact located in a sparsely populated zone with low seismic noise, while the Dutch site is in a more populated area, on the border between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
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