On 21-29 November, Dr Masayuki Wada, Dr Masato Kimura, and Dr Azam Zabihi visited the Italian island of Sardinia. Their scientific trip was connected with the ARIA project.
ARIA is a scientific laboratory for distillation of Argon-40, an isotope fundamental for use the medium in dark matter detectors. The project is realized thanks to the collaboration between INFN, National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Regione Sardegna.
The goal of the project is to build a cryogenic distillation column for the separation of the air into its fundamental components and for chemical and isotopic purification of argon. Purified Argon-40, in particular, will allow the development of an innovative technique for a direct dark matter search at the National Laboratory of Gran Sasso (LNGS) of INFN, designed and realized by the scientific collaboration on the DarkSide-20k experiment.
A 350 m high cryogenic distillation column will be installed in the Seruci-1 well, within the Mining Concession “Monte Sinni”. Currently, at the same mine, a test column has been already installed. It is called Seruci-0 and it is about 27 m high. The operation of this column is used to collect data on the physics of the process, and in order to train shifters from the entire collaboration.
On Wednesday, 3 December 2025, Astrocent’s Director, Leszek Roszkowski, took part in the 8th French‑Polish Forum for Science and Innovation, held at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space in Paris. This year’s edition focused on strengthening collaborations following the signing of the Nancy Treaty of Enhanced Cooperation and Friendship between France and Poland on 9 May 2025.
The Forum brought together high-level representatives of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research in France and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland, highlighting the importance of aligning project timelines with market availability of key technologies, ensuring effective collaboration between academia, industry, and funding agencies.
In the afternoon, the delegation visited the AstroParticule & Cosmologie (APC) laboratory at Université Paris Cité.
On November 4, we joined the global celebration of Dark Matter Day 2025 with a public talk by Dr Sebastian Trojanowski, theoretical physicist at Astrocent and the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCNR).
The lecture took the audience on a journey through one of the biggest mysteries in modern science — the nature of dark matter.
At Astrocent, we believe in sharing knowledge and inspiring curiosity — opening science to everyone, not just researchers. This event was part of that mission and fits perfectly within our Teaming for Excellence project, which builds bridges between science and society.
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