The new FuSe (Testing Fundamental Physics with Seismology) initiative has received four years of funding under the European COST Action programme. One of the institutes participating in the action is the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ). The grant will allow an international group of scientists to investigate how research on our planet can contribute to discovering relationships between the physical phenomena under study, contributing, for example, to a new approach to earthquake prediction.

European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) is a European programme supporting cooperation in science and technology. It enables the creation of research networks connecting scientists, entrepreneurs, representatives of NGOs and public administration. One such network is FuSe, which has just obtained funding for research integrating such diverse fields as geology, seismology, astrophysics, cosmic radiation, experiments and detectors, BIG Data, data analysis, AI, mathematics and theoretical physics.

In mid-October this year, the first meeting of the Management Committee (MC) of the COST action was held in Brussels. Among the many Polish institutions participating in the COST programme, Dr Marcin Bielewicz from the National Centre for Nuclear Research was elected as a member of the MC, and was also selected as a member of the smaller group (CORE GROUP) managing the FuSe action.

The new edition of the COST programme will implement the FuSE initiative, combining the challenges of fundamental physics with the study of seismic phenomena and earthquake precursors. Thanks to modern technologies – such as big data analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence – scientists will be able to discover new relationships between seismic phenomena and fundamental physical phenomena. The FuSe team hopes to identify traces of unknown physics that may be hidden in natural processes occurring inside the Earth and outer space. Research into fundamental physics can therefore not only expand our knowledge of the universe, but also deepen our understanding of the processes taking place inside our planet.