«Fortza Paris for the Einstein Telescope» . This is the message sent from Rome by the Italian government to officially launch the candidacy of the former mine of Sos Enattos, in Lula, as the seat of the prestigious gravitational wave observatory.
A "challenge" which sees Sardinia in contention with Limburg , a region on the border between Holland and Belgium, but which Italy is "convinced and determined to win".
This was recalled by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni , who arrived at the conference at the headquarters of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics , slightly late due to institutional commitments, but who reiterated from the stage that Sardinia "is the perfect place" to carry out the project and for this reason "the government and all the institutions involved are focused on making the candidacy successful ".
The ET - said Meloni - can in fact represent "the symbol of an Italy that wants to look upwards, but which also wants to remind the whole world that we Italians are capable of big business and of thinking big ". "We must live up to the people who have made our country great," added Meloni. "We lack for nothing: we have the history and scientific expertise and, as mentioned, also the perfect place to host this extraordinary infrastructure".
ET, concluded the premier, «is a huge leap forward in our ability to understand the cosmos. Politically, on the other hand, it is a way of making Italian and European research once again more central than in the past» . In short, "a great opportunity for related industries, for Sardinia and for Italy", as well as "a challenge absolutely within our reach".
For her part, the Minister of Labor Elvira Calderone took stock of the estimated induced activities of the project: "The estimated cost of the work is 1.7 billion, but the total impact generated will be around 6 billion euros ".
For his part, Professor Giorgio Parisi , Nobel Prize in Physics and coordinator of the Einstein Telescope scientific team, recalled what makes Sos Enattos the ideal place for ET, from the very low seismicity to the minimum population density.
Also in Rome were Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani , Undersecretary Mantovani, President of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics Antonio Zoccoli and Ettore Sequi , head of the Italian delegation on the Einstein Telescope Board of Governmental Representatives.
«Italy is competitive in terms of research quality and technical-scientific skills. It won't be easy to be protagonists, the competition is fierce,” Tajani said from the stage. "But - he added - we must be optimistic, optimism leads to victory ".
Transfer to the Capital also for the governor Christian Solinas , who in his speech underlined the close collaboration not only between the Region and the Government, but also that with research institutes and universities.
«Einstein Telescope - underlines Solinas - represents the greatest scientific and technological challenge, an extraordinary project that allows to consolidate the image of Sardinia as an ecosystem favorable to investments in innovation, research, development. We are carrying out an important process of reconversion of our entire mining system with projects of this type, starting from the shaft of the Sulcis mine, which will become a distillation tower for a noble gas such as argon, up to the Einstein Telescope and the radio telescope of San Basilio which already exists. All this also consolidates an alternative development model which, through investment in science, also represents a recipe against depopulation and for the revitalization of inland areas". "For us - concluded Solinas - it's a big bet, an extraordinary journey that we can't wait to start".