The president of CREF, Angela Bracco, was invited to speak during the Transglobal Polar Explorers’ Event: On the Tracks of Legendary Polar Explorers to demonstrate the commitment of the EEE/PolarquEEEst Project, in interdisciplinary scientific missions in extreme environments.

The event, which took place on June 2 at the Fram – The Polar Exploration Museum in Oslo, celebrated the results achieved by the first part of the Transglobal Car Expedition scientific expedition: the detection of cosmic rays at the northernmost point ever reached, and the measurement of ice thickness at the North Pole.

After the interventions of Paola Catapano (Science Communication), Christian Hass (University of Bremen, Germany), Fabrizio Bernardini (British Interplanetary Society), James Devine (CERN), Rosy Mondardini (Citizen Science Communication) and Andrew Comrie Picard (Pilot and Producer ), who presented some specific aspects of the expedition – from the instrumentation to the measurements, up to the practical and relational difficulties encounterd – the president underlined the importance of this type of expedition to obtain cosmic rays measurements at various latitudes, given that the Earth’s geomagnetic field acts as an energy treshold for some types of particles at certain latitudes.

The Enrico Fermi Research Center has long been involved in projects for measuring fluxes of cosmic rays that take into account correlations and temporal coincidences at various latitudes, with both a scientific and educational purpose. Examples of this are the EEE Extreme Energy Events Bringing Science into Schools Project, which involves several schools on Italian territory, the PolarQueest Expedition, which in 2018 retraced the footsteps of Nobile’s 1928 expedition, and the maintenance of the Ny Alesund polar station.

Recalling the implications of the study of cosmic rays not only for astrophysics, but also for climate or medicine, President Bracco concluded her speech by quoting the words that Enrico Fermi wrote in his notebook while he was in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize: “I am convinced that physical science must move towards an intense collaboration with other sister sciences, and especially with biology. I hope that such a trend, which is emerging today, can benefit both sciences”.

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Cover photo courtesy of Paola Catapano. In the photo from left: Marina Forlizzi (Executive Editor Springer, Milan) – Paola Catapano (Responsible for the Communication of Polarquest – Transglobal Car Expedition), Angela Bracco (President of the Enrico Fermi Research Centre), Rosy Mondardini (Responsible for the Citizen Science Communication of Polarquest – Transglobal Car Expedition).