Big scientific Instruments

The hope was to build a tool that can probe the secrets of the material world. The dream is that such a tool will not just bring world-class science to the Middle East, but also unprecedented cooperation across a conflict-ridden region. In May 2017, that dream came true with SESAME's synchrotron.

Even if you are a researcher living in the most southern country in the world, you can still participate in groundbreaking global research. For example, the Science and Technology Center of Valparaíso in Chile plays a role in the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Switzerland.

Studies by scientists in Chile shed light on phenomenon related to the creation of the Universe, the formation of celestial bodies and the characterization of different kinds of stars. "Our goal is to understand the parent stars of supernovas. I mean, what kind of star produced the explosion", says researcher Francisco Förster.

Something the general public is unaware of is that several Swiss research groups were instrumental in proving the existence of the Higgs boson, and all of them rely on SWITCHlan to transfer data.

The control room is the first installation of its kind in America that can operate telescopes and fluorescence detectors at a distance, from Mexico to Argentina. It also maximizes usages times and optimizes the transmission of scientific data.

In 2009, NASA launched the Kepler space observatory to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. For four and a half years, Kepler photographed a small 10-by-10 degrees section of the sky, taking snapshots each minute. "This is a goldmine of data, and we won’t see anything quite like it in the foreseeable future," explains Rasmus Handberg from the Stellar Astrophysics Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Astronomy has come a long way from the days of Galileo Galilei looking through a telescope to the skies. Major science infrastructures such as the Hubble Space Telescope and telescope arrays, including the forthcoming Square Kilometer Array, create huge amounts of research data for scientists across the world to explore and explain the cosmos.

Steven Tingay is passionate about designing and building radio telescopes in outback Western Australia and using them to look at the first stars and galaxies.

A group of 50 Brazilian researchers shall partake in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope project, deemed as revolutionary for Astronomy. Totaling R$ 1 billion in investments, the Telescope will be able to map almost half of the sky in six filters for a period of ten years and its deluge of data will be a huge challenge for information technology.

Latin America plays a vital role in the worldwide computing grid essential for processing the massive amounts of data generated from particle smashing experiments at the Large Hadron Collider that reveal information about the origins of the Universe.

"It's a very exciting time for physicists. The Higgs boson discovery is a milestone for the physics community, and for human understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the Universe. Australian research groups have been part of this for the best part of 25 years,” says Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics Director Prof Geoffrey Taylor.

Japanese researchers – together with colleagues from around the world – are analysing data from the Joint ALMA Observatory, located in a remote part of Chile on the Atacama plateau, 5000 meters above sea level. High-speed research networks enable researchers to carry out their studies wherever they are situated, without needing to be at the observatory.