Millions in funding for astroparticle physicists and geophysicists

From left to right: astroparticle physicist Christian Weinheimer, geophysicist Christine Thomas and astroparticle physicist Alexander Kappes. © private BMBF provides scientists at Münster University with 2.5 million euros / Participation in the large-scale experiments Einstein Telescope, IceCube, KATRIN and XENONnT Investigating the basic building blocks of matter and the universe - in order to pursue this aim, physicists at the University of Münster are receiving a grant of 2.5 million euros from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The ministry will thus support the large-scale projects of the participating research groups around the astroparticle physicists Prof. Alexander Kappes and Prof. Christian Weinheimer as well as the geophysicist Prof. Christine Thomas over the next three years. The funding will be used, among other things, for the work on the planned European gravitational wave experiment "Einstein Telescope". After gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein were discovered several years ago, this planned gravitational wave detector is intended to open up a completely new era of astronomy and astrophysics in which the University of Münster wants to participate. In the funded project, the geophysicists and physicists intend to measure seismic disturbances and develop methods to compensate for them for the extremely sensitive measuring instrument, the interferometer. The scientists receive further research funding for projects on neutrino astronomy - neutrinos are the lightest particles that reach Earth as cosmic rays.