PACK

ITA | ENG

Project
“PACK" aimed at the enhancement of the KM3-NeT infrastructure through the creation of new facilities in the regions of Puglia and Campania), lasting 30 months, aims to build the largest cabled deep-sea observatory in the world which will be able to identify high-energy cosmic neutrino sources, providing data that may revolutionize our understanding of the macro and micro cosmos. A next generation telescope installed in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of 3500 metres will help to study the most distant and complex celestial objects. It will make it possible to investigate cosmic-ray acceleration mechanisms, stellar evolution, the gravitational collapse of massive systems, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, up to the nature of Dark Matter.

Financial Resources
The project obtained 17.800.000 euro in funding from the NOP Research and Innovation 2014-2020 under the action “Enhancement of Research Infrastructures” which supports projects aimed at the upgrading of 18 research infrastructures identified as priorities by the Ministry of University and Research in the PNIR 2014-2020, covering one or more ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) areas and having a significant impact on the trajectories of the National Smart Specialization Strategy.

Impact on the Territory
The beneficiary of the funding is the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, with University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” as co-beneficiary. The project falls within the “Smart and Sustainable Industry, Energy and Environment” area and may have a significant impact in terms of technology transfer for the companies involved as suppliers in the construction of the telescope components. The proposed upgrading of the existing Italian KM3-NeT infrastructure will extend the Italian node to a size comparable to that of the US IceCube telescope located under the Antarctic ice, thus complementing the latter’s observation capabilities. The main nodes of the ground infrastructure network include the three research units promoting this project, located in Bari, Caserta and Naples.

Further information (in Italian):

Sito del progetto

Sito dell’INFN – Pagina dedicata al progetto

A caccia di neutrini cosmici a 3500 m di profondità (dal sito dell’Università di Genova, 10 febbraio 2020)

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26/04/2021