Silence can be heard at Sos Enattos, a Lula mine, a candidate site to host the Einstein Telescope. Sardinia is not a land of earthquakes. And this is one of the crucial characteristics for the construction of a facility – an investment of a few billion euros – that will allow the study of gravitational waves. And it is precisely seismic silence that is the subject of two ongoing studies that will try to better understand the deep nature of the subsoil and what makes this site so special: they are being conducted by two groups of researchers from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.
The first experiment is taking place in the two main extraction galleries of the former Sos Enattos mine and has already returned a 3D photograph of the subsoil structure, capable of detecting the presence of faults, cavities and tunnels, each with its own specific density. These data will allow us to expand the results of the research currently underway in the galleries of the Sardinian site, strengthening the multidisciplinary scientific collaboration at the heart of the Einstein Telescope project.
The second group of researchers from the INGV, instead, conducted another experiment in the municipality of Bitti, in the province of Nuoro, with the aim of completing the map of environmental noise: they installed 17 broadband seismometers which, thanks to their special helix configuration, are able to capture the high-frequency seismic noise that propagates in the first 200 meters of the subsoil. These instruments will return useful data for the study of the variations and sources of that “seismic silence” that makes Sos Enattos and the whole of Sardinia unique.
(Online Union)
