Einstein Telescope

Two researchers working on an outdoor measurement cabinet at the Lusatia candidate site near Bautzen, surrounded by fields and winter trees.

Visitor wearing a VR headset at Space Tech Expo Europe, standing in front of an Einstein Telescope booth display reading ‘A new window on the universe.

Technician in a lab watches a large cryostat component being lifted by an overhead crane inside a clean industrial workspace.

Speaker presenting at an ET@INGV event in Rome, with Einstein Telescope Italy banners and an audience seated in a conference hall.

📸 #ET_Snapshot
So much is happening across Europe around the Einstein Telescope right now — new milestones on site studies, deep-tech innovation, and political support are landing almost daily. Full roundup here 👉https://shorturl.at/jQSyr

Portrait of a man in an orange T-shirt wearing a grey backpack harness with a blue carabiner, standing with arms crossed against a plain light background.

Large cylindrical metal vacuum vessel or prototype lying horizontally on a workshop floor, clamped by several circular supports and threaded rods with bolted end caps.

Workbench in a mechanical workshop with a laptop, a red articulated coordinate-measuring arm, and a large metal ring on supports, alongside technical drawings and notes used for quality control.

Finite element eigenvalue buckling simulation of a long cylindrical tube between two supports, colored from blue to red to show total deformation values along the length.

#ET_young ✨ Meet Alexandre Lacroix, mechanical engineer at LAPP designing the 120 km ultra-high-vacuum beam tube for the Einstein Telescope. From CERN vacuum tech to spiral-reinforced tubes & rock climbing, he keeps ET both stable and adventurous!
Read more: shorturl.at/8c2AZ

Three photos from a conference: a crowded lecture room with attendees seated and listening to a presentation; a poster session where participants talk in front of display boards; and a coffee-break area with people networking near a table of snacks and drinks, plus a small group discussing a poster beside a whiteboard.

Group photo of the workshop participants on an outdoor terrace: about thirty people are standing and sitting in several rows, many wearing name badges on lanyards. In the background are green hills under a bright sky and a distant line of sea; a sunny day with a panoramic view.

Large group photo taken indoors at a research institute: around 35–40 conference participants of mixed genders stand and kneel in several rows, all wearing name badges and smiling at the camera. Behind them are posters on the wall and the “ikz” logo; the room has wooden floors, bright lighting, and a large potted plant by the windows on the right.

Autumn ET Collaboration workshops boosted ET tech: ET-LF TM Tower Integration (Isola d’Elba) refined the low-frequency test-mass tower, super-attenuator control, cryostat interface & baseline steps. MAD25 (Berlin) united GW, materials & industry to develop crystals for ultra-sensitive components.

🚀 GWECS Job Fair 2025!
We’re collecting job offers for the upcoming online fair connecting early-career GW scientists with employers.
Submit your openings: shorturl.at/4siMH
More details soon!

ET job opportunities: lnkd.in/d9S2-sRj

A large group of Einstein Telescope Annual Meeting participants gathered indoors for a group photo, standing closely together and smiling at the camera. The photo is taken from an elevated viewpoint in a bright lobby with posters on the wall and large windows in the back.

🌟 Wrapped up the ET Annual Meeting in Opatija!
Four days of plenaries, sessions, collaboration, and community events come to an end. Thank you to everyone for your talks, posters, discussions, and ideas shaping the next steps of ET.
✨ Together we build the future of GW astronomy!
#ET_meeting

Speaker presenting at the opening session of the 4th Einstein Telescope Annual Meeting in Opatija, with a slide titled “Do we master the ET technologies?” shown on a large screen. The audience listens and takes notes on laptops.

Prof. Rajka Jurdan from the University of Rijeka speaking at the opening of the 4th Einstein Telescope Annual Meeting, with a welcome slide displayed on screen and audience members seated in front.

Participants seated in red auditorium chairs during the 4th Einstein Telescope Annual Meeting, attentively following the presentations and taking notes on laptops and tablets.

The 4th Einstein Telescope Annual Meeting has started in Opatija, hosted by the University of Rijeka. Over the next four days, participants will discuss key aspects of the ET collaboration and design — shaping the future of #gravitationalwave research.

Visitors, including children and adults, experience virtual reality headsets at an interactive Einstein Telescope exhibition, surrounded by science-themed displays. Credit: Einstein Telescope EMR

Participants attend a formal Einstein Telescope meeting in a conference room, listening to a speaker presenting slides on a large screen at the front. Credit: Einstein Telescope Italy

A group of people stand and smile during a meeting in a bright office room, with a large image of the Einstein Telescope concept on the wall behind them. Credits: Andreas Schmitter / RWTH Aachen University

📸 ET Snapshot: Highlights from this week — progress in Sardinia’s feasibility assessment, the BeamPipes4ET project, the ET Roadshow launch in Flanders, and local engagement across the EMR region.
Read more: url-shortener.me/92Z9
#EinsteinTelescope #Science #ResearchInfrastructure

An artistic visualisation of two black holes merging in deep space. The smaller black hole orbits and spirals into the larger one, surrounded by a glowing orange and red accretion disk, releasing intense energy and gravitational waves across the dark cosmic background.

Einstein’s theory passes another test — and black holes reveal new secrets.
The latest LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA results uncover rare, fast-spinning mergers that may be second-generation black holes, born from earlier cosmic encounters. 💫
Image: Carl Knox, OzGrav
#EinsteinTelescope #GravitationalWaves

A 3D-rendered visualization of the underground Einstein Telescope facility. The image shows a large, futuristic tunnel with tall cylindrical vacuum chambers and interconnected laser arms extending into the distance. Small human figures are visible for scale, illustrating the massive size of the structure.

🌍 Lusatia joins as the 3d candidate site for ET!
After the June 2025 BGR meeting, Lusatia (Saxony, 🇩🇪) has officially become a candidate location — alongside Sardinia 🇮🇹 and the Euregio Meuse-Rhine 🇧🇪🇩🇪🇳🇱.
Preparatory studies are underway, led by Christian Stegmann (DESY).
shorturl.at/HwaRq

A young woman with long brown hair sits at an outdoor café table, smiling softly at the camera.

A young woman in a gray sweater and jeans stands smiling on a platform with metal railings, in front of long arms of a scientific observatory building extending into the distance under a bright blue sky with scattered clouds.

Meet Ulyana Dupletsa, postdoc at HEPHY in Vienna 🌍
She developed key tools for ET performance studies and now helps coordinate science case analyses.
💬 “It’s inspiring to be part of a community shaping the future of gravitational-wave astronomy.”
#ET_young #ResearchInfrastructures #ET_women

A large tunnel boring machine seen head-on inside a circular underground tunnel, with workers in helmets standing nearby.

Officials wearing white safety helmets cutting a ceremonial ribbon at the inauguration of the CoMET laboratory, with a presentation screen in the background.

A group of workshop participants posing in front of the LIGO Exploration Center building under clear skies.

🚀 Big weeks for the #EinsteinTelescope community:
🔹 Cosmic Explorer – ET Beamtube Workshop (LIGO Hanford, US)
🔹 #CoMET lab launch (Rovigo, IT)
🔹 Orosei workshop on Sos Enattos site
🔹 ET EMR work on sustainability

Tech, collaboration & future-ready! ✨

#EuropeanResearchersNight lit up cities across Europe this past weekend 26th September 🌍✨
The Einstein Telescope and gravitational waves took center stage in many presentations and activities — because they’re simply that exciting! 🚀🔭
Some highlights👇

Images: Brice Maximilien; Traczyk Piotr; CERN.

Engineers at CERN install a large cylindrical stainless-steel beam pipe section, suspended by a crane, as part of the Einstein Telescope pilot sector vacuum system.

Researcher at CERN stands next to a shiny cylindrical beam pipe prototype, looking through its interior, which shows a series of concentric ridges.

#ET_young #ET_team
Meet Carlo Scarcia: since 2021 he’s been designing the ET beam pipe vacuum system, cutting costs with smarter materials & methods. Now leading vacuum tests at the ET pilot sector at @cern.bsky.social.
@rwth.bsky.social

Group photo of participants at the ETO General Meeting in Isola d’Elba, Italy, September 2025. Around 30 people stand outdoors by a pool with palm trees and the sea in the background, wearing conference badges and blue sunglasses.

ETO’s 3rd General Meeting took place in Isola d’Elba 🇮🇹 — a key moment to reflect on progress, strengthen collaborations & set the course toward the #EinsteinTelescope. ETO is the organisation coordinating the design, planning & implementation of this next-gen observatory. #ETO2025

Image: LIGO/J. Tissino (GSSI)/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC) This plot shows gravitational-wave signals recorded by the LIGO Hanford detector almost ten years apart. The top shows data from LIGO's first-ever detection of gravitational waves, an event called GW150914, captured in 2015. The bottom shows the signal known as GW250114, captured in 2025. Both events involve colliding black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away with masses between 30 to 40 times that of our Sun. The purple line shows the data, which are a combination of the signal plus background detector noise. The noise comes from a variety of sources, including seismic motions that jiggle giant mirrors inside LIGO. The green line shows the best-fit prediction from general relativity for each signal. The much lower noise seen today is thanks to cutting-edge improvements made to the LIGO detectors that hush unwanted noise.

🌌 Ten years ago today, gravitational waves were detected for the first time. Now, the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA network is celebrating the anniversary with its clearest detection yet: GW250114, a black hole merger that confirmed Hawking’s Black Hole Area Theorem.
#GW10Years

Image: This plot compares the numbers and masses of black holes and neutron stars discovered by the LVK through Jan 2024, in just over eight years since the first detection, with those discovered by electromagnetic (EM) means over the last ~60 years.

Image: LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA / Aaron Geller / Northwestern

Colorful chart of black hole and neutron star masses detected by LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA, showing hundreds of cosmic collisions.

The LVK collaborations released GWTC-4.0, adding 128 new #gravitationalwave events from O4a, including the most massive black hole merger yet. Explore the data and interactive plots here: media.ligo.northwestern.edu/gallery/mass...

Portrait of Rainer Weiss, an elderly man with glasses, short white hair, and a blue sweater, looking calmly at the camera against a softly blurred background.

With deep sadness, we mourn the passing of Nobel laureate Rainer Weiss, whose vision shaped gravitational wave science and inspired generations. His recent contributions to the ET will continue to guide us. Our condolences to his family, friends, and community.
Photo credits: MIT/Bryce Vickmark

Visualisations of the new Einstein Telescope baseline design. Left: triangular layout; right: L-shaped 2L layout. The coloured blocks represent underground caverns and technical infrastructure, showing reduced volume and optimised geometry.

🚀 A new baseline design for the Einstein Telescope is here!
✅ Underground volume reduced by 25%
✅ Flexibility kept
✅ Science case intact
With site liaisons from Sardinia & Euregio Meuse-Rhine on board, it’s a major step forward.
👉 Read more on the ET page: lnkd.in/d9HzPmqA

A man giving a presentation using a “Pepper’s ghost” effect, appearing as a holographic figure. Behind him are two large circular projections: one showing handwritten notes and an artistic image of a galaxy, the other a portrait of Sir Isaac Newton. (Einstein Telescope EMR)

Entrance to the Rampa Tupedduli tunnel at the Sos Enattos former mine in Sardinia, Italy. The tunnel has a red metal gate, a small yellow door, and is set into a rocky hillside with green vegetation under a partly cloudy sky.

🌌 From classrooms to new science spaces – the Einstein Telescope community is buzzing! 🚀 25 teachers join #MaGIC in Maastricht, while Sardinia opens a new Project Unit dedicated to ET. ✨
Read more:
shorturl.at/RLpTQ
shorturl.at/d3Soa
Images: ET EMR, ET Italy

Marc Andrés Carcasona Portrait of a man wearing a dark blazer over a white shirt. He is outdoors on a sunny day, with blurred steps, grass, and trees in the background.

A baffle built at IFAE for Virgo to monitor scattered light. Insights from this work will guide the design of ET’s baffles. Image from M. Andrés-Carcasona et al., Phys. Rev. D 107 (2023) 6, 062001.

#ET_young Meet Marc Andrés Carcasona, PhD — postdoc at IFAE, designing baffles for the Einstein Telescope to block unwanted light and protect its sensitivity. From MIT to Caltech, science to 🎹📚✈️🥾 — Marc blends research, teaching & diverse passions.

White text on a bright blue background with the Einstein Telescope logo. The text reads: “ET Blue Book has been cited over 100 times on INSPIRE!”

🚀 The ET Blue Book passed 100 citations on INSPIRE - just 4 months after being posted on the arXiv!
~550 pages, 300+ contributors, and already a pillar for #GravitationalWaves science.
Thanks to all building on this shared vision!
#ET_science #ETPP
@inspirehep.net

A group photo of ET-PP Annual Meeting participants taken on the rooftop terrace under a bright blue sky. The attendees, wearing conference badges, are standing and smiling against a backdrop of city buildings.

A large group of attendees standing together on an outdoor terrace under a sunny sky during the ET-PP Annual Meeting in Barcelona. Most participants are wearing blue lanyards and name badges, and the background shows modern rooftop structures.

A group of people posing indoors for a group photo during the ET-PP Annual Meeting. They are wearing blue lanyards with name badges, and a video call screen in the background shows additional participants joining remotely.

A man standing at a podium inside an auditorium, delivering a presentation during the ET-PP Annual Meeting at the Barcelona School of Management. A slide projected behind him shows the event title “ET-PP annual meeting 22nd July 2024” and a photo of a building.

ET-PP Annual Meeting in Barcelona 🇪🇺
22-24 July ET-PP consortium met to review progress & plan the next steps for building the foundations of the Einstein Telescope. 30 institutions, 11 countries, one vision for Europe’s #gravitationalwave future!
#ETPP #InfraDev #HorizonEurope

@uofglasgow.bsky.social

Exterior view of the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, featuring the iconic curved architecture of the Armadillo building and the SSE Hydro arena under a blue sky with scattered clouds.

Conference hall during GR24 & Amaldi16 at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. Participants are seated in rows, with laptops open, while a large screen displays the conference logo on the stage wall.

✨ ET at #Amaldi16 & #GR24!
From 14 to 18 July at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, experts in gravity, astrophysics & cosmology gathered to share ideas on gravitational waves & next-gen detectors. Proud to be part of this global collaboration! 🌍
#EinsteinTelescope

Infographic titled "Meet GW231123: a gravitational-wave signal from the most massive binary black hole observed to date". It highlights the November 23, 2023 detection by LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA of two merging black holes—103 and 137 times the mass of the Sun—producing a final black hole over 225 solar masses. The event was observed by LIGO Hanford and Livingston for 0.1 seconds. A visual chart shows the masses in comparison to typical black hole ranges, noting the "upper mass gap." An inset suggests a "hierarchical origin story"—the merging black holes may have formed from previous mergers. The infographic emphasises the black holes' rapid spins (80–90% of the maximum theoretical spin rate) and shows their detection from a distance of 2–13 billion light-years. A world map marks the locations of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA detectors. Credit: Simona J. Miller / Caltech

🕳️ Our colleagues at LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA announced detection of the most massive #blackhole merger ever seen!
Event GW231123, observed on Nov 23, 2023, came from black holes of ~103 & 137 solar masses - forming one over 225 times the Sun’s mass☀️
#GravitationalWaves #GW231123

@wissenschaftsrat.de

Map of Germany highlighting the locations of the nine large-scale research infrastructure projects selected in the national prioritisation process (Forschungsinfrastruktur – FIS). Each project is marked with a labeled blue circle (letters C, D, E, H, I, L, P, R, S) corresponding to its acronym and institution. The Einstein Telescope (labelled "E") is included and linked to RWTH Aachen, Universität Münster, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and Technische Universität Dresden. The map was published by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

🌍 The ET preparatory phase has been shortlisted among 🇩🇪 Germany’s top 9 large-scale research infrastructures - a major recognition of its global relevance & scientific ambition!
📢 Full statement: shorturl.at/7Jkzw
#ETproject #Science #ResearchInfrastructures