14 DAY TRIAL // September 29th, the “Magnificent 7” European scientific program was presented to the public. It is the joint effort of seven bold projects to address some of the most difficult topics raised by astroparticle physics, such as dark matter, cosmic rays' origin, gravitational waves or the reasons behind space catastrophes.
This is among the largest collaborations of this kind, comprising seven large-scale programs from different fields of astroparticle physics: CTA, a wide array of Cherenkov Telescopes used for detecting high-energy gamma rays from space; KM3NeT, one cubic kilometer-large neutrino telescope located in the Mediterranean Sea; ton-scale detectors for dark matter search; a ton-scale detector used for determining the neutrinos' fundamental nature and mass; a Megaton-scale detector for the proton decay observation, neutrino astrophysics and investigation of the properties of neutrino; a huge array for detecting charged cosmic rays; and a third generation underground gravitational antenna.
Christian Spiering from DESY in Germany, chairman of the Roadmap Committee, is thrilled by the prospects. “New exciting discoveries lie ahead; it is up to us to take the lead on them in the next decade,” he said, referring to the European role in the gradual globalizing of the endeavor. Situated at the crossroads of many fields, such as astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology, the attempt of detecting the faintest of particles and reveal Universe's most elusive enigmas takes place within the outer space, in lone deserts, in remote underground or underwater laboratories.
The management of the European part of the project is ensured by ASPERA (the AStroParticle European Research Area), which is comprised of researchers from 13 European countries and receives funds from the European Commission. ASPERA's chief coordinator, Prof. Stavros Katsanevas (from IN2P3/CNRS in France) sheds more light on the relevance of the program, as well as on the importance of extra-European funding, “The timely realization of the Magnificent Seven is a big challenge, but we are confident that none will be killed contrary to what happens in the film, as the European agencies and ApPEC support these priorities and the same also emerge in other continents. It is important that we coordinate and share costs not only inside Europe but on a global scale”.
The next important goals that ASPERA researchers would like to see accomplished are the aid of worldwide search and investigations on the “dark energy” phenomenon and the establishment of a European Center for Astroparticle Physics Theory.