From The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati](IT) : “Revealing the secret language of dark matter”

From The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati](IT)

4.29.22
Nico Pitrelli
pitrelli@sissa.it
T +39 040 3787462
M +39 339 1337950

Donato Ramani
ramani@sissa.it
T +39 040 3787513
M +39 342 80 222 37

Milky Way Dark Matter Halo Credit: L. Calçada/ European Southern Observatory [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL)

Shedding light on the interplay of dark matter with standard matter, a new
SISSA study suggests a possible solution to one of the greatest and long-
standing mystery of astrophysics. The theory proposes a new property,
called “non-minimal coupling,” that would shed light on this mysterious
interaction. The research has been published in The AstrophysicalJournal.

In the Universe dark matter and standard matter “talk” to each other using a
secret language. This “discussion” happens thanks to gravity, scientists say but
not in a way they can fully comprehend. A new SISSA study published in The
Astrophysical Journal sheds light on this long-standing issue.
The authors of the research, Ph.D Student Giovanni Gandolfi and supervisors
Andrea Lapi and Stefano Liberati, propose a special property for dark matter
called a “non-minimal coupling with gravity”. This new type of interaction can
modify dark matter gravitational influence on standard “baryonic” matter.
According to the authors, the ‘non-minimal coupling’ could be the key to decrypt
the enigmatic dialogue between the two components, possibly solving one of the
biggest open questions about dark matter’s nature.
To prove the hypothesis, the assumption has been tested and then confirmed
with experimental data from thousands of spiral galaxies.

The mysterious interplay with standard matter

“Dark matter is everywhere” says the research’s authors. “Like a cosmic
scaffolding, it interconnects the Universe and holds galaxies together.

Dark matter cosmic web and the large-scale structure it forms The Millenium Simulation, V. Springel et al.

Dark matter is as important as mysterious, though. Possibly, one of dark matter’s
greatest enigmas is its interplay with standard matter, or ‘baryons’”. We know that
in this dialogue gravity has an important role, but scientists still don’t entirely
understand the phenomenon. “For this reason” say Gandolfi, Lapi and Liberati
“we asked ourselves: is gravity wrong or are we just missing something crucial
about dark matter’s nature? What if dark matter and standard ‘baryonic’ matter do
not communicate in the way we have always imagined?. With our research, we
have tried to answer these intriguing questions”.

The “non-minimal coupling”

The new study suggests the existence of a new feature of dark matter, named
‘non-minimal coupling’, which “can be described as a new type of interaction
between dark matter and gravity” the authors affirm. “It tells us a lot about the
way the two components “communicate”. If the non-minimal coupling is present,
standard matter “perceives” spacetime in a way which is different from the one
“experienced” by the dark matter. And this is a very interesting point. Usually, in
fact, dark matter and baryonic matter perceive spacetime in the same way. For
this reason, our theory, that we have proven to be in remarkable agreement with
present experimental data, could represent a crucial issue in understanding the
essence of dark matter”.

For a global comprehension of dark matter

The new study proposes a solution to one of the most discussed problems in
astrophysics, researchers say: “Among other things, the positions of those who
argue that dark matter does not exist, and therefore gravity must be modified, are
based on the difficulty of finding an explanation to this problem, which is one of
the last missing pieces for a global comprehension of dark matter”.
But there is more. “This feature of dark matter is not a piece of new exotic
fundamental physics” the author say. “One can explain the existence of this non-
minimal coupling with known physics alone”.

The future looks brighter…

“The future of dark matter looks brighter” the authors conclude. “Further studies
will be carried out to explore all the interesting implications of this proposed new
feature of dark matter. We wouldn’t be surprised to discover that this non-minimal
coupling could solve other unanswered questions of the Universe”.

_________________________________________
Dark Matter Background
Fritz Zwicky discovered Dark Matter in the 1930s when observing the movement of the Coma Cluster., Vera Rubin a Woman in STEM, denied the Nobel, some 30 years later, did most of the work on Dark Matter.

Fritz Zwicky.
Coma cluster via NASA/ESA Hubble, the original example of Dark Matter discovered during observations by Fritz Zwicky and confirmed 30 years later by Vera Rubin.
In modern times, it was astronomer Fritz Zwicky, in the 1930s, who made the first observations of what we now call dark matter. His 1933 observations of the Coma Cluster of galaxies seemed to indicated it has a mass 500 times more than that previously calculated by Edwin Hubble. Furthermore, this extra mass seemed to be completely invisible. Although Zwicky’s observations were initially met with much skepticism, they were later confirmed by other groups of astronomers.

Thirty years later, astronomer Vera Rubin provided a huge piece of evidence for the existence of dark matter. She discovered that the centers of galaxies rotate at the same speed as their extremities, whereas, of course, they should rotate faster. Think of a vinyl LP on a record deck: its center rotates faster than its edge. That’s what logic dictates we should see in galaxies too. But we do not. The only way to explain this is if the whole galaxy is only the center of some much larger structure, as if it is only the label on the LP so to speak, causing the galaxy to have a consistent rotation speed from center to edge.

Vera Rubin, following Zwicky, postulated that the missing structure in galaxies is dark matter. Her ideas were met with much resistance from the astronomical community, but her observations have been confirmed and are seen today as pivotal proof of the existence of dark matter.
Astronomer Vera Rubin at the Lowell Observatory in 1965, worked on Dark Matter (The Carnegie Institution for Science).

Vera Rubin, with Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) image tube spectrograph attached to the Kitt Peak 84-inch telescope, 1970.

Vera Rubin measuring spectra, worked on Dark Matter(Emilio Segre Visual Archives AIP SPL).
Dark Matter Research

Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search from DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US) at Stanford University (US) at SNOLAB (Vale Inco Mine, Sudbury, Canada).

LBNL LZ Dark Matter Experiment (US) xenon detector at Sanford Underground Research Facility(US) Credit: Matt Kapust.

Lamda Cold Dark Matter Accerated Expansion of The universe http scinotions.com the-cosmic-inflation-suggests-the-existence-of-parallel-universes. Credit: Alex Mittelmann.

DAMA at Gran Sasso uses sodium iodide housed in copper to hunt for dark matter LNGS-INFN.

</a Yale HAYSTAC axion dark matter experiment at Yale’s Wright Lab.

DEAP Dark Matter detector, The DEAP-3600, suspended in the SNOLAB (CA) deep in Sudbury’s Creighton Mine.

The LBNL LZ Dark Matter Experiment (US) Dark Matter project at SURF, Lead, SD, USA.

DAMA-LIBRA Dark Matter experiment at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ (INFN’s) Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS) located in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.

DARWIN Dark Matter experiment. A design study for a next-generation, multi-ton dark matter detector in Europe at The University of Zurich [Universität Zürich](CH).

PandaX II Dark Matter experiment at Jin-ping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, China.

Inside the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment U Washington (US) Credit : Mark Stone U. of Washington. Axion Dark Matter Experiment.
__________________________________________

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The International School for Advanced Studies Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute, located in Trieste, Italy.

SISSA is active in the fields of mathematics, physics, and neuroscience, offering both undergraduate and post-graduate courses. Each year, about 70 PhD students are admitted to SISSA based on their scientific qualifications. SISSA also runs master’s programs in the same areas, in collaboration with both Italian and other European universities.

SISSA was founded in 1978, as a part of the reconstruction following the Friuli earthquake of 1976. Although the city of Trieste itself did not suffer any damage, physicist Paolo Budinich asked and obtained from the Italian government to include in the interventions the institution of a new, post-graduate teaching and research institute, modeled on the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The school became operative with a PhD course in theoretical physics, and Budinich himself was appointed as general director. In 1986, Budinich left his position to Daniele Amati, who at the time was at the head of the theoretical division at The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]. Under his leadership, SISSA expanded its teaching and research activity towards the field of neuroscience, and instituted a new interdisciplinary laboratory aiming at connecting humanities and scientific studies. From 2001 to 2004, the director was the Italian geneticist Edoardo Boncinelli, who fostered the development of the existing research areas. Other directors were appointed in the following years, which saw the strengthening of SISSA collaboration with other Italian and European universities in offering master’s degree programs in the three areas of the School (mathematics, physics and neuroscience). Physicist Stefano Ruffo served as the director from 2015 until 2021, when he was succeeded by Andrea Romanino.

From The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati](IT): “Distant Galaxies and the true Nature of Dark Matter- a new SISSA study”

From The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati](IT)

10 February 2022

CONTACTS:
Nico Pitrelli
pitrelli@sissa.it
T +39 040 3787462
M +39 339 1337950

Donato Ramani
ramani@sissa.it
T +39 040 3787513
M +39 34

In direct conflict with the current prevailing theory used to describe the
universe, a new SISSA study suggests that at the center of spiral galaxies
there is a vast spherical region made up of Dark Matter particles where a direct interaction between the elementary particles that make up the Dark
Matter halo and those that make up ordinary matter occurs.

Caterpillar Project A Milky Way size Dark Matter halo and its subhalos circled, an enormous suite of simulations. Griffen et al. 2016.

The research will be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Credit: Buddy Nath on Pixabay.

At the centre of spiral galaxies – those near to us but also those billions of light-
years away – there is a vast spherical region made up of Dark Matter particles. This region has two defining characteristics: a density that is constant out to a certain radius that amazingly expands over time, while the density decreases.

This suggests the existence of a direct interaction between the elementary
particles that make up the Dark Matter halo and those that make up ordinary matter – protons, electrons, neutrons, and photons.

We anticipate that this hypothesis is in direct conflict with the current prevailing theory used to describe the universe – known as Lambda-Cold Dark Matter – which posits that particles of cold dark matter are inert and do not interact with any other particle except gravitationally.

These important findings have been reported in a new study, recently published
in the prestigious Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, that studied a large
number of distant galaxies, some seven billion light-years away. The study,
conducted by Gauri Sharma and Paolo Salucci from SISSA, together with Glen
Van de Ven from The University of Vienna [Universität Wien](AT), took a new look at one of the greatest
mysteries of modern physics. According to the authors, this new research
represents a step forward in our understanding of Dark Matter, the elusive element in our universe which has been theorized based on its demonstrable
effects on heavenly bodies, but which is yet to be directly proven. This is despite
any number of targeted astrophysical observations and experiments set up for
the purpose in dedicated underground laboratories [See below in Dark Matter Background].

Image by Gauri Sharma

Studying Dark Matter in distant galaxies

Dark matter makes up approximately 84% of the mass in the cosmos: “Its
dominant presence throughout the galaxies arises from the fact that the stars and
hydrogen gas are moving as if governed by an invisible element” explains Gauri
Sharma. Up until now, attempts to study it have focused on galaxies near to our
own: “In this study, however,” she explains, “for the first time, we were seeking to
observe and determine the distribution of the mass of spiral galaxies with the
same morphology of those nearby, but much further away and therefore earlier
by some seven billion years. The idea is essentially that these progenitors of
spiral galaxies like our own could offer fundamental clues into the nature of the
particle at the heart of the mystery of Dark Matter.” Paolo Salucci adds:

“By studying the movement of stars in approximately 300 distant galaxies, we
discovered that these objects also had a halo of Dark Matter, and that, by starting out from the centre of a galaxy, this halo effectively has a region in which
its density is constant”. This trait had already been observed in studies examining
nearby galaxies, some of which were also the work of SISSA.

The new research has revealed, however, that this central region had something
that was wholly unexpected within the context of the so-called “standard model of
cosmology”.

National Aeronautics Space Agency (US) Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Standard Model of Cosmology.

Sharma says that “as a result of the contrast between the properties
of nearby and distant spiral galaxies – that is, between today’s galaxies and their
forebears from seven billion years earlier, we could see that not only is there an
unexplained region with a constant density of Dark Matter, but also that its dimensions increase over time as if being subjected to a process of ongoing
expansion and dilution.” This evidence is very difficult to be explained if the Dark Matter particles did not interact, as posited in the Lambda-CDM model. “In the research we recently published,” says Sharma, “we offer evidence of direct interaction between dark matter and ordinary matter, that over time slowly builds
up a region of consistent density from the centre of the galaxy outwards.” But
there’s more.

A slow yet inexorable process

“Amazingly, the above region with constant density expands over time. It’s a
very slow process, but one that is inexorable” states Salucci. One possible
explanation? “The simplest is that, in the beginning, when the galaxy was formed,
the distribution of Dark Matter in the spherical halo was as predicted by the Lambda-CDM theory, with a density peak in the centre.

Lamda Cold Dark Matter Accerated Expansion of The universe http scinotions.com the-cosmic-inflation-suggests-the-existence-of-parallel-universes. Credit: Alex Mittelmann.

Later on, the galactic disc that characterises spiral galaxies is formed, surrounded by a halo of extremely dense Dark Matter particles. As time passed, the effect of the interaction that we have posited meant that the particles were captured by the stars or expelled into the outer reaches of the galaxy.” This process would create a spherical region of consistent density within the Dark Matter halo, with dimensions that increase proportionately over time and finally reach those of the galactic stellar disc, as described in the article in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“The results of the study pose important questions for alternative scenarios that
describe Dark Matter particles (aside from Lambda-CDM), such as Warm Dark
Matter, Self-Interacting Dark Matter and Ultra Light Dark Matter” says Sharma.

“These models must also account for the clear time evolution registered of the
above region. The properties of very distant galaxies in space and time offer
cosmologists a genuine gateway to understanding the mysteries of Dark Matter”. It is interesting to note, “that, in line with Nietzsche’s philosophy, the truth of this mystery may be revealed not by detailing the most beautiful scenario – the one that is mathematically most elegant, simple and anticipated as an expansion of
long-verified theories – but rather through an “ugly” scenario determined by an
inelegant and complicated observational phenomenology, from a neglected
physical theory that is completely unrelated to that which is familiar to us”, says
Salucci.

______________________________________________________
Dark Matter Background
Fritz Zwicky discovered Dark Matter in the 1930s when observing the movement of the Coma Cluster., Vera Rubin a Woman in STEM, denied the Nobel, some 30 years later, did most of the work on Dark Matter.

Fritz Zwicky.
Coma cluster via NASA/ESA Hubble, the original example of Dark Matter discovered during observations by Fritz Zwicky and confirmed 30 years later by Vera Rubin.
In modern times, it was astronomer Fritz Zwicky, in the 1930s, who made the first observations of what we now call dark matter. His 1933 observations of the Coma Cluster of galaxies seemed to indicated it has a mass 500 times more than that previously calculated by Edwin Hubble. Furthermore, this extra mass seemed to be completely invisible. Although Zwicky’s observations were initially met with much skepticism, they were later confirmed by other groups of astronomers.

Thirty years later, astronomer Vera Rubin provided a huge piece of evidence for the existence of dark matter. She discovered that the centers of galaxies rotate at the same speed as their extremities, whereas, of course, they should rotate faster. Think of a vinyl LP on a record deck: its center rotates faster than its edge. That’s what logic dictates we should see in galaxies too. But we do not. The only way to explain this is if the whole galaxy is only the center of some much larger structure, as if it is only the label on the LP so to speak, causing the galaxy to have a consistent rotation speed from center to edge.

Vera Rubin, following Zwicky, postulated that the missing structure in galaxies is dark matter. Her ideas were met with much resistance from the astronomical community, but her observations have been confirmed and are seen today as pivotal proof of the existence of dark matter.
Astronomer Vera Rubin at the Lowell Observatory in 1965, worked on Dark Matter (The Carnegie Institution for Science).

Vera Rubin, with Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) image tube spectrograph attached to the Kitt Peak 84-inch telescope, 1970.

Vera Rubin measuring spectra, worked on Dark Matter(Emilio Segre Visual Archives AIP SPL).
Dark Matter Research

Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search from DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US) at Stanford University (US) at SNOLAB (Vale Inco Mine, Sudbury, Canada).

LBNL LZ Dark Matter Experiment (US) xenon detector at Sanford Underground Research Facility(US) Credit: Matt Kapust.

Lamda Cold Dark Matter Accerated Expansion of The universe http scinotions.com the-cosmic-inflation-suggests-the-existence-of-parallel-universes. Credit: Alex Mittelmann.

DAMA at Gran Sasso uses sodium iodide housed in copper to hunt for dark matter LNGS-INFN.

Yale HAYSTAC axion dark matter experiment at Yale’s Wright Lab.

DEAP Dark Matter detector, The DEAP-3600, suspended in the SNOLAB (CA) deep in Sudbury’s Creighton Mine.

The LBNL LZ Dark Matter Experiment (US) Dark Matter project at SURF, Lead, SD, USA.

DAMA-LIBRA Dark Matter experiment at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ (INFN’s) Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS) located in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.

DARWIN Dark Matter experiment. A design study for a next-generation, multi-ton dark matter detector in Europe at The University of Zurich [Universität Zürich](CH).

PandaX II Dark Matter experiment at Jin-ping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, China.

Inside the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment U Washington (US) Credit : Mark Stone U. of Washington. Axion Dark Matter Experiment.
______________________________________________________

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste. Credit: Mike Peel (http://www.mikepeel.net)

The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati] (IT) (SISSA) is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute, located in Trieste, Italy.

SISSA is active in the fields of mathematics, physics, and neuroscience, offering both undergraduate and post-graduate courses. Each year, about 70 PhD students are admitted to SISSA based on their scientific qualifications. SISSA also runs master’s programs in the same areas, in collaboration with both Italian and other European universities.

History

SISSA was founded in 1978, as a part of the reconstruction following the Friuli earthquake of 1976. Although the city of Trieste itself did not suffer any damage, physicist Paolo Budinich asked and obtained from the Italian government to include in the interventions the institution of a new, post-graduate teaching and research institute, modeled on the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa(IT). The school became operative with a PhD course in theoretical physics, and Budinich himself was appointed as general director. In 1986, Budinich left his position to Daniele Amati, who at the time was at the head of the theoretical division at The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]. Under his leadership, SISSA expanded its teaching and research activity towards the field of neuroscience, and instituted a new interdisciplinary laboratory aiming at connecting humanities and scientific studies. From 2001 to 2004, the director was the Italian geneticist Edoardo Boncinelli, who fostered the development of the existing research areas. Other directors were appointed in the following years, which saw the strengthening of SISSA collaboration with other Italian and European universities in offering master’s degree programs in the three areas of the School (mathematics, physics and neuroscience). The physicist Stefano Ruffo, the current director, was appointed in 2015. He signed a partnership with the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology to set up a new PhD program in Molecular Biology, with teaching activity organized by both institutions.

Organization

SISSA houses the following research groups:

Astroparticle Physics
Astrophysics
Condensed Matter
Molecular and Statistical Biophysics
Statistical Physics
Theoretical Particle Physics
Cognitive Neuroscience
Neurobiology
Molecular Biology
Applied Mathematics
Geometry
Mathematical Analysis
Mathematical Physics

In addition, there is the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Natural and Humanistic Sciences (now LISNU – Laboratorio Interdisciplinare Scienze Naturali e Umanistiche), which is endowed with the task of making connections between science, humanities, and the public. It currently offers a course in Scientific Communication and Scientific journalism.

SISSA also enjoys special teaching and scientific links with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the Elettra Synchrotron Light Laboratory.

From The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati](IT): “There are 40 billion billions of Black Holes in the Universe!”

From The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati](IT)

1.18.22

Nico Pitrelli
pitrelli@sissa.it
T +39 040 3787462
M +39 339 1337950

Donato Ramani
ramani@sissa.it
T +39 040 3787513
M +39 342 8022237

There are 40 billion billions of Black Holes in the Universe!

Image by PIxabay

With a new computational approach SISSA researchers have been able to
make the fascinating calculation. Moreover, according to their work, around
1% of the overall ordinary (baryonic) matter is locked up in stellar mass
black holes. Their results have just been published in the prestigious The
Astrophysical Journal.

How many black holes are out there in the Universe? This is one of the most
relevant and pressing questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology. The
intriguing issue has recently been addressed by the SISSA Ph.D. student Alex
Sicilia, supervised by Prof. Andrea Lapi and Dr. Lumen Boco, together with other
collaborators from SISSA and from other national and international institutions. In
a first paper of a series just published in The Astrophysical Journal, the authors have investigated the demographics of stellar mass black holes, which are black
holes with masses between a few to some hundred solar masses, that originated
at the end of the life of massive stars. According to the new research, a
remarkable amount around 1% of the overall ordinary (baryonic) matter of
the Universe is locked up in stellar mass black holes. Astonishingly, the
researchers have found that the number of black holes within the
observable Universe (a sphere of diameter around 90 billions light years) at
present time is about 40 trillions, 40 billion billions (i.e., about 40 x 1018, i.e.
4 followed by 19 zeros!).

A new method to calculate the number of black holes

As the authors of the research explain: “This important result has been obtained
thanks to an original approach which combines the state-of-the-art stellar and
binary evolution code SEVN developed by SISSA researcher Dr. Mario Spera to
empirical prescriptions for relevant physical properties of galaxies, especially the
rate of star formation, the amount of stellar mass and the metallicity of the
interstellar medium (which are all important elements to define the number and
the masses of stellar black holes). Exploiting these crucial ingredients in a self-
consistent approach, thanks to their new computation approach, the researchers
have then derived the number of stellar black holes and their mass distribution
across the whole history of the Universe. Alex Sicilia, first author of the study,
comments: “The innovative character of this work is in the coupling of a detailed
model of stellar and binary evolution with advanced recipes for star formation and
metal enrichment in individual galaxies. This is one of the first, and one of the
most robust, ab initio computation of the stellar black hole mass function across
cosmic history.”

What’s the origin of most massive stellar black holes?

The estimate of the number of black holes in the observable Universe is not the
only issue investigated by the scientists in this piece of research. In collaboration
with Dr. Ugo Di Carlo and Prof. Michela Mapelli from The University of Padua [Università degli Studi di Padova](IT),they
have also explored the various formation channels for black holes of different
masses, like isolated stars, binary systems and stellar clusters. According to their
work, the most massive stellar black holes originate mainly from dynamical
events in stellar clusters. Specifically, the researchers have shown that such
events are required to explain the mass function of coalescing black holes as
estimated from gravitational wave observations by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration.

Caltech/MIT Advanced aLigo at Hanford, WA(US), Livingston, LA(US) and VIRGO Gravitational Wave interferometer, near Pisa(IT).

Lumen Boco, co-author of the paper, comments: “Our work provides a robust
theory for the generation of light seeds for (super)massive black holes at high
redshift, and can constitute a starting point to investigate the origin of ‘heavy
seeds’, that we will pursue in a forthcoming paper.

A multidisciplinary work carried out in the context of “BiD4BESt – Big Data
Application for Black Hole Evolution Studies”

Prof. Andrea Lapi, Sicilia’s supervisor and coordinator of the Ph.D. in
Astrophysics and Cosmology at SISSA, adds: “This research is really
multidisciplinary, covering aspects of, and requiring expertise in stellar
astrophysics, galaxy formation and evolution, gravitational wave and multi-messenger astrophysics; as such it needs collaborative efforts from various
members of the SISSA Astrophysics and Cosmology group, and a strong
networking with external collaborators.”

Alex Sicilia’s work occurs in the context of a prestigious Innovative Training
Network Project “BiD4BESt – Big Data Application for Black Hole Evolution
Studies” co-PIed by Prof. Andrea Lapi from SISSA (H2020-MSCAITN-2019
Project 860744), that has been funded by the European Union with about 3.5
million Euros overall; it involves several academic and industrial partners, to
provide Ph.D. training to 13 early stage researchers in the area of black hole
formation and evolution, by exploiting advanced data science techniques.

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste. Credit: Mike Peel (http://www.mikepeel.net)

The International School for Advanced Studies [Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati] (IT) (SISSA) is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute, located in Trieste, Italy.

SISSA is active in the fields of mathematics, physics, and neuroscience, offering both undergraduate and post-graduate courses. Each year, about 70 PhD students are admitted to SISSA based on their scientific qualifications. SISSA also runs master’s programs in the same areas, in collaboration with both Italian and other European universities.

History

SISSA was founded in 1978, as a part of the reconstruction following the Friuli earthquake of 1976. Although the city of Trieste itself did not suffer any damage, physicist Paolo Budinich asked and obtained from the Italian government to include in the interventions the institution of a new, post-graduate teaching and research institute, modeled on the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa(IT). The school became operative with a PhD course in theoretical physics, and Budinich himself was appointed as general director. In 1986, Budinich left his position to Daniele Amati, who at the time was at the head of the theoretical division at The European Organization for Nuclear Research [Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire](CH)[CERN]. Under his leadership, SISSA expanded its teaching and research activity towards the field of neuroscience, and instituted a new interdisciplinary laboratory aiming at connecting humanities and scientific studies. From 2001 to 2004, the director was the Italian geneticist Edoardo Boncinelli, who fostered the development of the existing research areas. Other directors were appointed in the following years, which saw the strengthening of SISSA collaboration with other Italian and European universities in offering master’s degree programs in the three areas of the School (mathematics, physics and neuroscience). The physicist Stefano Ruffo, the current director, was appointed in 2015. He signed a partnership with the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology to set up a new PhD program in Molecular Biology, with teaching activity organized by both institutions.

Organization

SISSA houses the following research groups:

Astroparticle Physics
Astrophysics
Condensed Matter
Molecular and Statistical Biophysics
Statistical Physics
Theoretical Particle Physics
Cognitive Neuroscience
Neurobiology
Molecular Biology
Applied Mathematics
Geometry
Mathematical Analysis
Mathematical Physics

In addition, there is the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Natural and Humanistic Sciences (now LISNU – Laboratorio Interdisciplinare Scienze Naturali e Umanistiche), which is endowed with the task of making connections between science, humanities, and the public. It currently offers a course in Scientific Communication and Scientific journalism.

SISSA also enjoys special teaching and scientific links with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the Elettra Synchrotron Light Laboratory.