Outer space, what lies beyond
Once a man said:” The Earth is the cot of mankind, but a man can not remain into a cot forever”.
Have you ever asked yourself what is outside our planet? What happens? Which kind of interactions exists among the different bodies of the universe? This event will answer those questions and many more! Thanks to the participation of Prof Alain Jorissen and of Dr. Juan Aguilar we will explore the universe and we will try to shed light on particular and really uncommon aspects of physics. Are you ready to start this journey with us?
The billion-star surveyor
Alain Jorissen
Professor & Director of Astronomy and Astrophysics Institute
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Gaia is a unique ESA astronomical satellite nicknamed "The billion-star surveyor" as it will deliver positions, motions, distances, photometry, and possible binary nature of 2 billion stars of our Galaxy. This European endeavour has been made possible thanks to the joint efforts of about 250 astronomers across Europe for 15 years, with a strong participation of Belgium. ULB Institut d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique is leading the work on non-simple objects, investigating all objects for which a single-star solution appears unsatisfactory.
The frozen observatory
Juan A. Aguilar
Professor, Experimental physicist
Physics Department, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Did you know that at the South Pole, buried in the ice, lies a huge observatory looking till the edge of the Universe? IceCube, that’s the name of this fascinating machine, was built to study a particular typology of tiny, almost weightless particles called Neutrino. They are extremely difficult to study since unlike light they barely interact with matter, traveling across the Universe without ever changing trajectory. This means that if you can catch them they could tell you something about where and when they come from, revealing information from the most distant and violent Universe. That's exactly IceCube's mission right now!