Results of the most recent competitions from National Science Centre MAESTRO, HARMONIA and SONATA BIS. HARMONIA grant will be given to Professor Agnieszka Pollo for project VIPERS and furthermore… SONATA BIS grants will be given to Professor Justyna Łagoda (Precise measurement of neutrino oscillations… T2K), Dr Katarzyna Małek (ASTROdust project…) and Dr Przemysław Małkiewicz (for research on quantum origin of cosmic expansion and primordial structures).

Analysis of data from Advanced LIGO detectors revealed four new sources of gravitational waves. The signal GW170729 is connected to the most massive and distant source that was observed so far. Another one, GW170818, was discovered thanks to global network of three LIGO-Virgo detectors. It corresponds to the binary system located around 2,5 bilion light years from Earth.

A team of Polish researchers won in the first round of remote-access international competition Global Legal Hackathon 2018, which promotes innovative digital solutions in the area of law and legislation. The solution presented by dr Adam Zadrożny (NCBJ) and associates is based on blockchain technology and is meant to help the taxpayers document, that their business partner was a VAT taxpayer during the transaction.

In the latest edition of the National Science Center’s grant competitions, six scientists from the NCBJ have been successful. The most valuable achievement is in the SONATA BIS 7 competition. Dr Kamila Kowalska from the Theoretical Physics Division will receive almost 2.5 million PLN for her research on „Extensions of Standard Model with vector-like fermions.”

First simultaneous detection of a gravitational wave by the two US-based interferometers and the Advanced VIRGO European interferometer was announced during the meeting of Ministers of Science from the G7 countries. The observation made possible to roughly locate source of the emission, which marks a new era in astrophysics. PolGraw, a team of scientists from 8 research institutions in Poland, is a member of the VIRGIO collaboration.

The Advan­ced LIGO research consortium (in which some NCBJ scientists participate) has reported the 3^rd instance of direct observation of gravitational waves. The logged waves were emitted just before two black holes merged into a single spinning larger hole of a mass 49 times larger than the mass of our Sun and about 3 billion light years away the Earth.