Euregio Meuse-Rhine prepares for the Einstein Telescope

The Einstein Telescope is a new European large-scale scientific infrastructure project, which aims to create the world's largest observatory for the detection of gravitational waves (tiny jolts in space-time) in order to better understand the Big Bang theory and the origins of the Universe.

T

he infrastructure will consist of three pairs of giant interferometers, each 10 km long, arranged in a triangle, and buried between 200 and 300 metres deep.

Several sites in Europe are being considered, including the Three Borders region, in the heart of the Meuse-Rhine Euregio, straddling the Belgian, Dutch and German borders. The decision on the location would be taken in 2025.

In the meantime, the Euregio Meuse-Rhine is preparing itself through several funded and ongoing projects (E-TEST, ETpathfinder, ET2SMEs), which will allow, for example, in-depth studies of subsoils, the development of a large suspended mirror at cryogenic temperature (a project unique in the world which will be developed at the Centre Spatial de Liège - CSL) and technologies to improve the observation of gravitational waves.

Predicted by Albert Einstein and observed for the first time in 2015, gravitational waves mark the beginning of the revolution in gravitational astronomy, and of a new physics to further our understanding of the origins and evolution of our Universe.

The Einstein Telescope is a huge scientific project that could take place partially in Wallonia. It offers important and very stimulating opportunities for researchers but also for technological companies in the regions concerned, while constituting an undeniable attraction factor, just like CERN.

The Walloon Einstein Telescope Conference, organised on 18 March by ULiège and the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, was an opportunity to inform the partners about the many facets of the project and to take stock of the situation.

The Ministers-Presidents Pierre-Yves Jeholet and Oliver Paasch, the Secretary of State Thomas Dermine as well as the Ministers, Vice-Presidents of the Walloon Government Willy Borsus and Philippe Henry, the Governor of the Province of Liège, Hervé Jamar, the President of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, Luc Gillard, and his Director, Michael Dejozé, and the representatives of the communes concerned by the project took part in the Walloon Conference of the Einstein Telescope.

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Annick PIERRARD