The results on the telescope designed by the qubic projectwhich seeks to reveal the origin of the universein which Argentine researchers participate, were presented this Thursday by the scientific journal Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP), informed the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
Through the publication of a special issue that includes eight scientific articles, the magazine released the results of the laboratory tests on the operation of all the components of the telescope developed especially for the Qubic project and detailed its scientific capabilities.
“These articles show the theory and science behind this telescope, what you want to detect, the complete idea from the design, the manufacture of the different subsystems, its testing in the laboratory and everything that this instrument implies,” explained Beatriz García, astronomer and researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet) and one of the representatives of the Qubic Project in Argentina.
“We are putting this instrument, which is unique on the planet, for consideration by the scientific world,” said the researcher, who is part of the 130 professionals from France, Italy, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Ireland who make up the Qubic Project.
It is an instrument with a novel design, designed to probe what is called “the physics of the primordial universe”from which it is studied “what happened a few fractions of a second after the Big Bang, in the first instants of the universe”indicated from Science and Technology.
The telescope was in development since 2008 in Paris, was built in 2018 and tested between 2019 and 2020 to finally reach the province of Salta in July 2021, where it is currently being tested in a special integration room built under the Qubic project.
will be installed in your definitive observation site near San Antonio de los Cobresfive thousand meters above sea level, in early 2023.
“Physicists still don’t have direct evidence of what really happened at this time. This is exactly what Qubic is looking for”, says García.
If confirmed, the Qubic Project could thus answer “one of the great questions of cosmology that is still open”, about what happened during the first moments of the Universe. Also, they would “an important result for cosmology with profound implications for particle physics”.
This telescope competes with half a dozen other instruments developed in different countries, they pointed out from the Qubic Project and explained that, in any case, the final discovery “must be confirmed independently by various teams, since it will have repercussions in the scientific community and beyond”.