Interviewing top-notch physicists at the SteemSTEM / Utopian.io Meetup
The SteemSTEM / Utopian.io MeetUp is almost here! Slightly more than one week is left on the calendar and we’ll finally meet each other in the beautiful city of Florence. Before (or actually during) this exciting event we will publish some exclusive interviews with real researchers and engineers working at the Virgo Experiment.
Even if you did not get the chance to attend the meetup this time, we would love to ask questions on your behalf!
Who are we going to interview?
The two scientists who agreed to be contacted are Giovanni Losurdo and Alessio Rocchi.
Giovanni Losurdo was the project leader of the detector upgrade phase which lasted about 5 years (2011-2016).
Since 2005 he coordinated all R&D within the Virgo Collaboration, the preparation of the Advanced Virgo Conceptual Design and of the Project Execution Plan and Cost Plan, the activity of the Advanced Virgo subsystem manager and the preparation of the Advanced Virgo Technical Design.
Since 2003 he dealt with the commissioning of the full Virgo detector and has been coordinator of the MSC (Mirror Suspension Control) Group.
In the 1992‐2000, he gave a major contribution to the design, realization and test of the Superattenuator, the unique vibration isolation system for the Virgo mirrors.
Alessio Rocchi is an experimental physicist in the field of gravitational waves since 1997. At the beginning of his career, he worked on cryogenic resonant bar detectors (NAUTILUS at INFN Frascati National Laboratories, EXPLORER at CERN, and MINIGRAIL at Leiden University) at the development of quantum limited superconducting electronics.
In 2007, he joined Virgo and became the responsible for the installation of the adaptive optic system (named TCS) for the correction of the aberrations in the interferometer's mirrors. Lately, in the framework of the Advanced Virgo Project, he has been in charge of the design and construction of the upgraded TCS.
In February 2017, he was appointed Commissioning Coordinator, with the mandate to lead the experimental activities on site in view of the joint science runs with LIGO.
What can you ask?
Everything concerning Virgo, the collaboration with LIGO, gravitational waves, black holes, noise detection, data analysis, etc. Anything you may want to. Physicists are generally very happy to answer every single question!
In practice, it is enough to write down in the comment section your questions. We will ask them next week to the people behind one of the most exciting experiments on Earth!
To conclude
As the meetup is approaching, this may be one of the last chances to support us by contributing to the expenses generated by moving 30 people from all over the world to Italy.
Every upvote counts, and we would appreciate yours.
Thanks for the opportunity!
I have a few questions:
Thanks again for the opportunity, I cant wait to get answers and to hear what they have to say. By the way, is it gonna be possible to have a recording of the interviews? :-) because I am currently travelling and wont be able to catch a live feed...
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Hi,
I am currently travelling but I've been thinking about joining @Utopian-io ever since I discovered it here on steemit. Whenever I come back from my trip and have more time, I will come check your website and most likely sign in to your nice project.
Thanks for all those questions. We have forwarded all of them to the researchers and will come back to you (and everyone else) with the answers in a few days!
Thank you very much. I can't wait to read or hear their answers. Physics is such a great topic to learn about.
I fully agree with you. I am however biased, somehow :D
These two interviews are huge and really help sell SteemSTEM as a tool and community that extends beyond Steemit. I hope the upcoming App has a way to feature them for longer than a few days.
As for my question, I don't have a physics-specific query, but I am fascinated by how scientists balance work and life so my question is as follows:
If you weren't a physicist, what would you be?
We have forwarded your question! You will however wait a little bit before getting the answer :)
There are so many scientific explanations or can l call it theories that i never subscribed to because the prof is baseless. I will like to ask Rocchi few for clarification.
It was said that the entire universe started as a hot dot which expanded spontaneously,an expansion called the Big Bang and later cooled the various forms of matters and antimatters it contained. Further processes resulted in the formation of the universe.
Now my question. Can this be proved?
Secondly, l believe matters ought to have been annihilated in the process that formed the early universe but we still have them in abundance,WHY?....
I will love to see his reaction to these questions.
Thanks for the opportunity.
We will ask your question on your behalf and report the answer. However, I can also answer that.
The Big Bang theory as a lot of consequences, and they have been observed today. Therefore, from the point of view of data, Standard Cosmology holds extremely. Of course, there are alternatives that are not excluded by data (yet?). We hence need more experiments to be able to put a check mark there.
So to clearly answer the question: data cannot proved that the big bang happened, but this theory consists in the best explanation for what we observe.
This question is not clear. I will try to answer in the way I understand it. But please come back to me if necessary. In the early universe, matter and antimatter constantly annihilated into each other. But there was a second reaction: matter-antimatter pairs were created from the vacuum. This happened in equilibrium. Then, for some reason we don't understand, there was slightly more matter than antimatter and with the expansion of the universe, antimatter almost disappeared.
Don't hesitate to ask more ^^
Thanks @lemouth for the response. yes I do believe that there isnt enough fact to hold the theory but little was gathered anyway and more is still on. I am just satisfied with your response, However, hearing from Rocchi wouldnt be bad as well.
I WOULD LIKE TO ADD
Why is the research about the SEA DEPTH crawling, compared to the SPACE research that moves at rocket speed?
Waiting to hear from you guys. WAVING.......
Don't worry, your question will be asked even if I have an opinion on it ;)
I don't know details about sea depth research funding and status so that this is hard to me to answer anything useful, backed up by numbers. Therefore I prefer to skip. Apologies :)
Thanks @lemouth..
Bringing these scientists to our domain is really a cool idea. Maybe we should look forward to them joining steemit and steemSTEM
We tried at the former meetup, but it didn't work. Maybe better chance this time. Who knows? :D
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I will like to ask Alessio if he had seen visible gravitational waves much the same way we see visible light of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Gravitation waves are invisible. There are other similar properties though like the speed.
I'd still prefer he answers :)
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Hehe. You want to hear directly from the mouth of an expert. Cool 😎
In @greenrun's message, it could be "visible" in the sense of "visible in a detector". Similarly to the fact that one needs an appropriate apparatus to detect non visible electromagnetic waves.
Oh!! That definitely was the case.
But I also think @greenrun is trying to be nonfictional and factual just as he always does, for things he may have read or seen somewhere :) Great though!!
Good write up on the bio of this professional. Such a rich professional experience. I have good job. Resteemed.
they look.. "wink" .. normal. :)
Physicists are not all crazy-looking, believe me :D
A question for Rocchi, if he has ever experienced (seen in reality) a supernova, what was it(sight, feeling...) like? Its reality?
I missed this question. I forwarded it and I hope it is not too late. I will let you know (we may also ask it directly at Virgo and report the answer).
Ha!! Thanks a lot. Just do what you can so long its within your hopes and power :) i'll stand by waiting for a reply. Cheers!!
Hi,
I'm coming back here hoping there are answers to all the answers we asked a few weeks ago.