Einstein Telescope

18/03/2026

18/03/2026

We’re happy to be hosting at EGO this week a group of CERN engineers working on Einstein Telescope, the future third generation gravitational wave detector, within the collaboration with the Einstein Telescope Organization (ETO)!

The group, whose expertise ranges from civil engineering, to vacuum, to electric engineering, is visiting EGO and Virgo to learn more about the details of the detector’s functioning and maintenance from the engineers, researchers and technicians who know it best 🔧

Building ET will require a lot of research and development, and the knowledge gained in the past 40 years since the design of Virgo will be the foundation for the exciting future of gravitational wave science in Europe ✨

17/03/2026

🗣️ The Einstein Telescope Collaboration (ETC) has officially appointed Michele Maggiore as its new Spokesperson and Angélique Lartaux as Deputy Spokesperson!

The Spokesperson serves as a key representative of the Collaboration and helps guide its scientific and strategic work together with the Deputy Spokesperson and the Collaboration’s governing bodies.
Michele and Angélique take on these roles at a crucial moment for ET, as the project moves toward major decisions on detector design, site selection and the next phase of technical development.

Read the full announcement including details about their programme here: https://einsteintelescope.eu/news/einstein-telescope-collaboration-appoints-michele-maggiore-as-spokesperson-and-angelique-lartaux-as-deputy-spokesperson/

09/03/2026

| This week in the Einstein Telescope community

🏛️ Governance, coordination & site selection
🔹 Members of the Board of Governmental Representatives (BGR) - the body involved in key strategic decisions, including the future location of ET - visited the Centre Spatial de Liège and the laboratory to explore technologies relevant to the future observatory. 👉 https://lnkd.in/di6ShYjv
🔹A strategic meeting was held at EGO (EGO & the Virgo Collaboration) on 2-3 March, which brought together representatives of three candidate sites (TETI, EMR, Lusatia) and the ET Organisation (professional organisation that coordinates and manages processes leading to ET implementation). The programme also included a visit to Virgo gravitational-wave detector. More about ET current main structures 👉 https://lnkd.in/dUiKsyjm
🔹In Germany, two important events highlighted Saxony’s candidacy for ET. The Berlin event focused on presenting Lusatia’s candidacy, while the meeting in Dresden focused on possible next steps towards collaboration with Italy - including discussion of a potential joint candidacy to host 2-L detectors involving Sos Enattos and Lusatia. 👉https://shorturl.at/b030Z
🔹In Sardinia, the regional government also announced a €2 million investment in digital infrastructure linked to the Sos Enattos candidacy, underlining the importance of site readiness and high-performance connectivity for future international scientific collaboration. 👉https://shorturl.at/QINgO

💡 Innovation, engagement & visibility
🔹In the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, innovation with ET potential continues to grow. One example is Boolean’s integrated OT network stack, combining IT data and safety-critical signals in a single Ethernet connection — a promising solution for future ET infrastructure.👉https://lnkd.in/esqQbWp2
🔹In the Netherlands, members of two committees from the Dutch House of Representatives visited South Limburg to learn more about ET. They also heard about the role of in Maastricht as an R&D and testing centre, and about the Einstein Telescope Education Centre (ETEC) in Kerkrade (Discovery Museum), where schoolchildren are introduced to science, technology and gravitational waves. 👉https://shorturl.at/TFtvU

🌐 Communication
Last week also saw the launch of a new website for the Lusatia candidate site: https://lnkd.in/dEezjN2j

Step by step, the Einstein Telescope is moving forward 🌍

Photos: Einstein Telescope EMR, Einstein Telescope IT
Photo of Lusatia site: by Gernot Menzel
Photo of the meeting in Berlin: Christoph Soeder/TUD

04/03/2026

With great sadness we share that Prof. Andrzej Trautman passed away on 27 February 2026, aged 93. At a time when many doubted were physically real, his research helped show they were more than a mathematical artifact - work that contributed to the path toward their first detection in 2015.
Honor to his memory.
Photo: Jakub Ostałowski

Z głębokim żalem informujemy, że 27 lutego 2026 roku zmarł prof. Andrzej Trautman – wybitny fizyk teoretyczny, jeden z pionierów badań nad falami grawitacyjnymi, były wiceprezes Polskiej Akademii Nauk i wieloletni wykładowca Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Miał 93 lata.

W czasach, gdy wielu uczonych wątpiło w fizyczną realność fal grawitacyjnych, prof. Trautman wykazał, że nie są one jedynie matematycznym artefaktem, lecz rzeczywistym zjawiskiem, które powinno być możliwe do wykrycia. Jego prace – w tym opublikowana wspólnie z Ivorem Robinsonem w „Physical Review Letters” analiza rozwiązań równań Einsteina – stworzyły fundament pod eksperymentalne potwierdzenie fal grawitacyjnych w 2015 roku i rozwój detektora LIGO.

Współpracował z najwybitniejszymi uczonymi XX wieku, m.in. z Rogerem Penrose’em. Był członkiem rzeczywistym PAN, laureatem Nagrody Fundacji na rzecz Nauki Polskiej oraz wielu innych wyróżnień państwowych i środowiskowych.

Pozostał do końca oddanym nauczycielem akademickim. Jego dorobek na trwałe wpisał się w historię światowej fizyki i w nasze współczesne rozumienie wszechświata.

Cześć Jego pamięci.

Zdjęcie: Jakub Ostałowski

🔗 https://pan.pl/zmarl-profesor-andrzej-trautman-wybitny-przedstawiciel-polskiej-i-swiatowej-fizyki-teoretycznej/

26/02/2026

Einstein Telescope is a growing European research effort - bringing together Research Units and stakeholders from across Europe and beyond.
Its international community now includes
✨~1,800 people
✨across 30+ countries,
✨organised in 90+ Research Units
✨and 260+ institutions.

Today we spotlight one of the newest teams to join the Einstein Telescope Collaboration: FZU (Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR) - Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic. 🇨🇿🤝

Czech involvement in ET has grown step by step - from building relevant expertise, to formal partnerships, to hands-on contributions. It started with Czech researchers joining the LISA Mission work in 2020, gaining experience with ultra-precise optical technologies. In 2025, Czech institutions strengthened long-term cooperation with Deutsches Zentrum für Astrophysik gGmbH (Germany), and FZU began contributing to (a technology testbed in the Netherlands) by developing software that helps monitor and control highly sensitive instruments.

This momentum led to FZU becoming an official Research Unit in the Einstein Telescope Collaboration in November 2025, followed by the submission of the “GravWave” proposal in December 2025 - a national initiative bringing together 8 Czech institutes and universities to support long-term participation.

🔬 What FZU brings to ET: expertise in and components (including advanced elements used to keep powerful laser beams stable), precision engineering, and software for control, simulations, and data analysis.

Great to see the ET community expanding with new countries and teams joining! 🚀

Photo credits: 1) FZU official page; 2) DZA / Paul Glaser

More about FZU: https://www.fzu.cz/en/

19/02/2026

🔭 | A busy week for the Einstein Telescope community

🌱 Building ET sustainably
This week, Sapienza Università di Roma hosted the workshop “Einstein Telescope (ET) Research Infrastructure: Challenges and Long-Term Sustainability” — focusing on life-cycle sustainability assessment, smart energy and transport, underground construction solutions, efficient operations, social impact, etc.

👩‍🔬👨‍🔬 Growing the community
Also in Rome, the “Einstein Telescope Science Workshop for Early Career Researchers” brings together young researchers active in the Einstein Telescope Collaboration — with dedicated discussion sessions to share ideas and build new collaborations.

⛏️ Turning plans into infrastructure
An EU call for tenders has been published for the construction of ET-SUnLab at Sos Enattos (deadline: 16 April 2026) — a key facility supporting ET-related R&D, geophysical monitoring, and outreach, funded jointly by the Sardinia Region and INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare INAF - Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, INGV Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia.

🧩 Education + technology
• The first students have started the minor on ET fundamentals and engineering challenges in Dutch Limburg.
• The ET-MEROPE consortium is developing techniques to measure and correct thermal distortions in laser beams — crucial for ET’s extreme precision, with wider spin-off potential (from astronomy optics to laser communications).

🎬 Bringing science to the public
The Planetarium of Rome hosted the national premiere of the documentary “Einstein Telescope: Listening to the Universe Beyond the Stars” — a look at the future European gravitational-wave observatory and the science and technology behind it.

11/02/2026

Today, 11 February, GW stands for two things:
Gravitational Waves 〰️ - and Girls & Women ❤️

Today we have two reasons to celebrate:
10 years since the first gravitational-wave detection announcement (11 February 2016),
and the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

A fun coincidence: both stories trace back to 2015.
The first gravitational-wave signal was recorded in 2015 (GW150914, 14 September 2015). In the same year, the UN established the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The Universe has perfect timing!

Here’s to discoveries that expand our view of the Universe — and to our female colleagues who make them possible. ✨

02/02/2026

📸 | What’s been happening around the Einstein Telescope lately 👇

EMR: Commissioned by the ET EMR Project Office, Ohmega Geoservices GmbH company is carrying out magnetotelluric measurements to study subsurface structure and natural electromagnetic noise. The instruments are quiet and mostly out of sight - if you spot equipment, please don’t touch it!
👉 https://lnkd.in/epHVhX4D

IT: A framework agreement between INGV, the Sardinia Region, and the Municipality of Nuoro will establish a scientific-university hub and support long-term research, advanced training, and connected to the Sos Enattos candidate site.
👉 https://lnkd.in/dQvgNNVq

GE: Construction has begun on HAFUN (Hamburg Fundamental Interactions Laboratory, University of Hamburg) - a new home for ~200 researchers and a future platform for innovative experiments in gravitational physics, including technologies relevant for low-frequency detection.
👉 https://lnkd.in/dgdgtaY9

NL: The new Dutch coalition agreement explicitly reaffirms support for ET, including continued international cooperation and further strengthening of in Maastricht - a welcome boost for the joint candidacy with partners in Belgium and Germany.
👉 https://lnkd.in/dfm_mZK8

IT: Within (Italy’s main infrastructure programme supporting the ET candidacy), the CoMET laboratory in Rovigo is a standout example of collaboration across research institutions and local stakeholders - focused on developing mirror coatings for next-generation GW detectors.
👉 https://lnkd.in/darvfhXe

📌 Check the Einstein Telescope supranational page for updates and opportunities: https://lnkd.in/dH3xYPkx

Photos: Einstein Telescope EMR, Einstein Telescope IT, C.F. Møller Architects

28/01/2026

🌟 Why the Einstein Telescope Goes Underground

The Einstein Telescope will be built mostly underground - not by choice, but by necessity. To detect incredibly faint gravitational waves, ET must escape the "noise" of the surface world, including Newtonian noise that can't be shielded against.

A new article on the ET page takes you below the surface and explains:

🟦 why ET must go underground
🟦 what the underground facility could look like
🟦 how safety is designed into every step
🟦 what it feels like to work underground — from the people who do it

👉 Read here: https://einsteintelescope.eu/news/science-in-silence-why-the-einstein-telescope-goes-underground/

With thanks to the contributors: Dorota Rosinska, Patrick Werneke, Jean-Philippe Tock, Saverio La Mendola, Maria Marsella

Photo: Andreas Freise