Esplorare l'espansione dell'Universo con l'astronomia multi-messaggero
18/06/2025
Grazie alle sinergie tra gli esperimenti sulle onde gravitazionali (GW),
come LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA e osservazioni elettromagnetiche di
transienti e galassie, una varietà di nuove misurazioni cosmologiche
è diventato possibile di recente. Molte di queste misurazioni si basano su
l'uso degli eventi GW come "sirene standard". A seguito del rilevamento di
la prima controparte elettromagnetica di un evento GW, GW170817, la
è stata eseguita la prima misurazione della sirena standard "luminosa". Noi
continuare a cercare controparti ottiche per consentire una maggiore luminosità
analisi delle sirene con l'astronomia multimessaggera delle onde gravitazionali
DECam Survey (GW-MMADS), per il quale descriverò i nostri recenti risultati.
Misurazioni standard della sirena per eventi "oscuri", cioè senza un
controparte elettromagnetica confermata, può anche essere eseguita, utilizzando
correlazioni incrociate con i cataloghi di galassie o di nuclei galattici attivi. In
in questa conferenza mostrerò le nostre ultime misurazioni standard delle sirene e
previsioni e aspettative attuali per le rilevazioni multi-messaggero in
nei prossimi anni.
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IAU Office of Astronomy for Education Center Italy: cosa è, cosa fa, perché lo fa in quel modo
11/06/2025
Fondato nel marzo 2021, l’Office of Astronomy for Education Center Italy (I-OAE) è un ufficio internazionale della IAU, coordinato e finanziato da INAF. In collaborazione con altri Centri, finanziamo corsi di formazione per insegnanti in decine di paesi nel mondo e organizziamo un congresso internazionale annuale.
I-OAE sostiene pratiche di insegnamento innovativo e inclusivo, con apprendimenti centrato sulla persona e la creazione di una comunità di pratica nel bacino del Mediterraneo.
Nei suoi primi anni di esistenza, I-OAE ha sviluppato una serie di processi collaborativi, a cui hanno partecipato rappresentanti di Albania, Cipro, Croazia, Egitto, Francia, Grecia, Israele, Italia, Marocco, Montenegro, Palestina, Portogallo, Slovenia, Siria, Spagna e Turchia. I-OAE coordina anche l’edizione internazionale di astroEDU, la piattaforma di attività didattiche peer-reviewed della IAU.
I-OAE è un ufficio aperto alla collaborazione di volontari che ne condividano valori e metodi.
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Seeking the New World of Spin Zero - Fundamental mysteries of nature and cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization
06/06/2025
Particle cosmology is a discipline seeking a fundamental understanding of the Universe based on particle physics. Five mysteries drive our research today: cosmic inflation, baryon asymmetry, neutrino properties, dark matter, and dark energy. Resolving any of the five mysteries will revolutionize our picture of the Universe. Numerous interesting theoretical hypotheses have been proposed to this end. Many require new scalar particles, such as inflatons, axions, supersymmetric particles, etc. They are essentially an attempt to expand the role of the vacuum. Since we have not yet found such spin-zero particles, we shall invent new eyes to make an experimental or observational breakthrough. To this end, the observation of CMB polarization is one of the keys today. In this seminar, I focus on research topics to which I have contributed, including observations of CMB polarization for studying inflatons and searches for light axion-like particles.
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Origin of Lunar Water and its Role in Enabling Sustainable Solar System Exploration
21/05/2025
The presence of water on the Moon and in lunar samples has emerged as one of the most exciting discoveries in recent times. Multiple sources are believed to have contributed to the lunar water inventory. Understanding the origin of lunar water holds significance that transcends scientific, technological, and societal domains. The Moon is becoming a favourite target for both established and emerging space-faring nations as well as commercial entities. In addition to national pride and scientific curiosity, the resurgence in lunar exploration is driven by a growing recognition of the Moon as a technology testbed for exploring more distant bodies within the Solar System. In this talk, I will outline our pioneering research which contributed to the discovery of water on the Moon and is shaping a vision for the future, envisioning a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface, largely facilitated by the in-situ use of resources, including water.
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The latest results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI): Is the Standard Cosmological Model in Question?
19/05/2025
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has constructed the largest 3-dimensional map of the universe to date, using millions of galaxies and quasars from its first three years of observations. The way this map evolves across space and time is determined by the relative contributions of ordinary matter, neutrinos, and the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy. Surprisingly, when DESI’s new data are combined with other probes, the standard cosmological model struggles to provide a coherent picture of the universe’s evolution. A simple extension of the model, where the dark energy equation of state varies over time instead of remaining constant, appears to better align with the observations. I will present these latest DESI results and explore their implications and future prospects.
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Vera Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time: The greatest movie of all time
13/05/2025
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the first project at the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will be the most comprehensive optical astronomical sky survey ever undertaken. Starting this year, Rubin Observatory will obtain panoramic images covering the sky visible from its location in Chile every clear night for ten years. The resulting 60 petabytes of raw imaging data, essentially a digital color movie of the night sky, will include about 20 billion galaxies and a similar number of stars, and will be used for investigations ranging from cataloging potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids to fundamental physics such as characterization of dark matter and dark energy. I will briefly describe scientific goals behind this project that drove its design, illustrate the progress of its ongoing construction, and finish with a discussion of data analysis challenges that need to be tackled to make the best use of the massive and complex LSST dataset.
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The X-ray Astrophysics of the Hot and Violent Universe
08/05/2025
X-rays reveal a hot and violent Universe. From the hot intracluster medium in clusters and groups of galaxies to gas swirling round black holes, X-rays provide vital information. High spatial resolution imaging and high spectral resolution spectroscopy reveal the role of black holes in the evolution of galaxies. I shall give a personal perspective on the development of our understanding over the past decades and include some recent results.
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Exploring Multi-Messenger Astronomy by Current Observatories and Future Frontiers
06/05/2025
The talk will trace the remarkable journey of multi-messenger astronomy, from its early, groundbreaking detections to its transformative impact across multiple domains of physics. Though currently based on just a handful of observed events, these observations have revealed the immense potential of combining gravitational waves, electromagnetic signals, and neutrinos to probe the most extreme phenomena in the Universe. We will discuss how multi-messenger discoveries have advanced our understanding in areas ranging from relativistic astrophysics to nuclear physics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. We will highlight challenges and perspectives of current and next-generation observatories, which will turn rare and unique multi-messenger detections into routine, ushering in a new era of breakthrough discovery. Finally, we will describe how the Horizon Europe project ACME (Astrophysics Centre for Multimessenger studies in Europe) provides opportunities to access the major multi-messenger infrastructures, data analysis tools, and theoretical expertise to exploit multi-messenger observations and maximize their scientific impact.
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Multimessenger Astrophysics with Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays and High-Energy Neutrinos
28/04/2025
Multimessenger astrophysics has advanced rapidly over the past decade, driven in large part by new observations of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves. At the same time, ultra-high-energy cosmic ray experiments have made significant progress, including the discovery of a dipole anisotropy in UHECR arrival directions - a milestone that has revitalised the field of ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray astronomy. In this talk, I will review recent results in the search for the origins of high-energy neutrinos and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. In particular, I will highlight a promising new site of ultra-high energy cosmic ray acceleration in active galactic nuclei (AGN): the wide-angle relativistic winds known as ultra-fast outflows.
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Non-standard signatures from CMB polarisation with an insight into the new technological challenges.
07/04/2025
In this seminar, I will focus on non-standard signatures from CMB polarisation that may indicate the existence of new phenomena beyond the standard models of cosmology and particle physics, from both theoretical and observational perspectives. ESA's Planck mission has observed CMB temperature anisotropies at the cosmic variance limit, but polarisation remains to be further investigated. CMB polarisation data are important not only because they contribute to provide tighter constraints on cosmological parameters but also because they allow the study of physical processes that would be excluded if only the CMB temperature maps were considered. I use polarisation data into account to assess the statistical significance of the anomalies currently observed only in the CMB temperature map, and to constrain the Cosmic Birefringence (CB) effect, which is expected in parity-violating extensions of the standard electromagnetism.
Measuring CMB polarisation is technically challenging because the polarised signal is much fainter than the temperature signal, and accurate polarisation estimates require exquisite control of systematic effects. To investigate the impact of spurious signals in upcoming CMB polarisation experiments, I present a study of the interplay between half-wave plate (HWP) non-idealities and the beams of the instrument for the next generation of CMB experiments, with an insight into how this instrumental contamination affects the measurement of the cosmic birefringence effect.
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