News

At the behest of the Academy and NWO, an independent committee has evaluated the portfolio of the two organisations' institutes. The Committee concludes that these national research institutes increase the effectiveness of Dutch scientific endeavour. On 21 February, the directors of the Academy and NWO presented the report, with their response to it, to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.

The Dutch Council of Ministers has decided that the Netherlands will be partner in the construction and management of the largest radio telescope in the world, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). NWO institute ASTRON coordinates the Dutch participation in the SKA. The ambitious project will lead to major discoveries about the nature of our universe and answer longstanding questions. On 12 March 2019 the international partners, now including the Netherlands, will sign a treaty agreement in Rome. The 30 million Euros allocated by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is the basis for Dutch participation to realise the SKA. Read more: www.astron.nl

Last week NWO announced that it awarded seven proposals for innovative research infrastructure within the programme NWO Investment Grant Large, with a total budget of 17.9 million euros. With this programme, NWO funds large research facilities, within which researchers from throughout the Netherlands work together, often with international partners. Three investments are for the NWO Institutes ASTRON and Nikhef: DUPLLO: Digital Upgrade for Premier LOFAR Low-band Observing (ASTRON), Gravitational waves: the new cosmic messengers (Nikhef) en Searching for Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic-Ray Sources using a new Detector Concept in the Pierre Auger Observatory (Nikhef/Radboud University). The Dutch-Belgian research facility DUBBLE - managed by NWO-I - also received an NWO Investment Grant Large: ‘New x-ray fluorescence and absorption spectroscopy capabilities for DUBBLE’.

The more complex the object, the harder it is to fold up. Space satellites often need many small motors to fold up an instrument, and people have difficulty simply folding up a roadmap. Physicists from Leiden University, University of Amsterdam and NWO Institute AMOLF have now designed a structure that folds itself up in several steps.

Science Weekend is the leading national event for science and technology! On Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 October companies, research institutes, universities and museums will open their doors. Several NWO institutes will also hold an open day during this weekend.

Since 1 September, a new director heads the High Field Magnet Laboratory HFML in Nijmegen: Prof. Peter Christianen. He succeeds Prof. Nigel Hussey who led the lab for five years. HFML generates the strongest continuous magnetic fields in the world and is an international, open-access user facility.

With an innovative new type of receiver, called Apertif, the field of view of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands has been increased 37 times. Apertif, developed by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (NWO Institute ASTRON), will be officially opened today, on 13 September 2018 by deputy Cees Bijl of the Drenthe province. Today the 50-year anniversary of the telescope will also be celebrated.

Apart from a billion Milky Way stars, ESA’s Gaia spacecraft also observes extragalactic objects. Its automated alert system notifies astronomers whenever Gaia spots a transient event. A team of astronomers from NWO Institute SRON have found out that by tweaking the existing automated system, Gaia can be used to detect hundreds of peculiar transients in the centres of galaxies. They found about 480 transients over a period of about a year. Their new method will be implemented in the system as soon as possible allowing astronomers to determine the nature of these events. The findings will be published in the November issue of MNRAS.