On December 31, 2015, Radio3 Scienza, the RaiRadio 3 program dedicated to science and technology topics, aired a special episode featuring a series of phone interviews conducted by Marco Motta, focusing on scientific expectations for 2016.
Among the various scientific disciplines, astronomy and physics were represented respectively by Marta Burgay, a researcher at the Cagliari Astronomical Observatory OAC-INAF, and by Eugenio Coccia, a researcher at CERN and a member of the INAF Board of Directors.
Marta Burgay, besides wishing all listeners a “stellar year,” highlighted two main “objects” to watch. The first is undoubtedly the Sardinia Radio Telescope, which has finally moved out of the “beta” phase and is available to the scientific community for constant and detailed observations of radio waves from the Universe.
The second topic to monitor during 2016, according to Burgay, is the radical improvement of observation instruments for the elusive gravitational waves, whose existence, predicted by Einstein’s theory (which turns 100 in 2016!), has so far only been demonstrated indirectly.
Starting with the LIGO interferometer operating in the USA, there is hope to finally “see” these phenomena, thanks also to the parallel work of the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO-VIRGO) in Cascina, in the province of Pisa.
Eugenio Coccia, a researcher at CERN and a full professor at Tor Vergata, as well as a member of the INAF Board of Directors, also identifies gravitational waves as the major novelty of 2016.
Coccia adds two other important novelties to these.
The first is the “imprint” (since it cannot yet be called a true “discovery”) provided by a new type of boson that is expected to weigh six times more than those currently known and studied at CERN in Geneva.
The second is the SESAME Synchrotron project SESAME (SYNCHROTRON-LIGHT FOR EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST) taking shape in Jordan, which is bringing together countries with ongoing conflicts and difficult diplomatic relations, such as Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt, under the “diplomacy of CERN.”
2016 promises to be a year full of new developments.