The Einstein Telescope race becomes a three-way race: Germany also challenges Sardinia.

The Lusatia region in Saxony, Germany, has officially become the third candidate site for the future Einstein Telescope gravitational wave observatory , following the former Sos Enattos mine in Sardinia and the Meuse-Rhine Euregio area on the border between Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. This is reported in a statement on the Italian Einstein Telescope project website.

The decision comes after Lusatia expressed interest in applying and initiated contact with the ET team. Now that the application is official, Germany will also be able to initiate technical, geological, and economic studies to assess the project's feasibility.

At the beginning of October , Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi also commented on the possible German candidacy in the Tagesspiegel newspaper, expressing his hope for collaboration between Sardinia and Saxony if the observatory were built on two sites, thus giving rise to a far-reaching European project.

The directors of the Einstein Telescope Organisation, Fernando Ferroni and Andreas Freise , consider it «very encouraging» that «three regions consider the idea of hosting the Einstein Telescope an interesting opportunity, not only for science, but also for regional and national development».

"There's certainly competition," Ferroni points out, "but it's in the project's best interest to find the best possible site for the Einstein Telescope. We now have three serious candidates. That's a positive thing."

(Unioneonline)