Alien life research now has a national reference with the Italian Astrobiological Institute, IAI-Astrobiolab, which networks the astrobiology laboratories active in Italy to coordinate and promote collaboration and develop technologies to search for ET. “Astrobiology is the study of the origin, persistence and presence of life in the universe,” Raffaele Saladino, president of the Italian Society of Astrobiology (SIA), who promoted the foundation of the Italian Astrobiological Institute-Network of National Astrobiology Laboratories, told Ansa. Saladino, who teaches at the University of Tuscia, will preside over the Institute until the first meeting scheduled for 2020, when the governance structures will be defined. Astrobiology, he added, "involves both fundamental research, which aims to understand how life originated on Earth and how it may have originated or may originate on other planets, and applied research that starts from these basic notions to design innovative instruments for space missions that search for traces of life on other planets and moons of the Solar System." It is an institute that involves various sectors, from physics to chemistry to engineering, for a total of 14 laboratories and about 80 researchers who work in various universities and institutions, such as the universities of Tuscia in Viterbo, Federico II in Naples, Rome Sapienza and Tor Vergata, Turin, Bologna, Trento, L'Aquila, Parma, the National Research Council (CNR), the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).
Article published on November 25, 2019 - 16:05
