Gulbenkian Prize for CENTRA |
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Richard Brito, PhD student and researcher at CENTRA won the 2013 Gulbenkian's Scientific Research Program. Brito's project, supervised by Vitor Cardoso and Paolo Pani is titled "Weighing Einstein's Messengers," and intends to study the physical consequences of putative massive gravitons.
Until now it has not
been possible to isolate gravitons.
For this reason it is not possible to know their properties.
In particular it is not known if gravitons are massless or massive. A graviton
with mass may
explain why the expansion of the Universe
is accelerating without resorting to the
existence of dark energy and
can also explain why the cosmological constant is so small (120 times smaller than
the theoretically predicted). Therefore
the existence of gravitons with mass can have very
important consequence in the fields of
cosmology, astrophysics and physics of gravitational
waves. Every year the Gulbenkian Foundation, through the Scientific Research Program, rewards young researchers in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences. Besides Richard Brito, two other young researchers were distinguished, Carlos Oliveira from CEMAT and Eduardo Alves from Golp/IPFN, in physics. More information can be found at http://www.gulbenkian.pt/section65artId1844langId1.html
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Last Updated on Monday, 30 December 2013 15:00 |