Special Relativity is a fundamental tool for the analysis of collision events in Particle Physics. This gives the opportunity to create educational environments in which interactions between theory and experimental data occur. An opportunity whose potentiality is worth exploring. An interactive application to analyse a collision between particles is presented as a tool that opens a mystery students have to solve using Special Relativity as an inquiry tool. As in a Role Play Game students are introduced into an environment they have the empathise with. They are asked to play the role of a particle physicist, to analyse a collision between a pion and an Helium nucleus and to solve the mystery that arises from their analysis: momentum seems not to be conserved. Will they have to dismiss the conservation law or start the hunt for an undetected particle responsible for the missing momentum? As in many Role Play Games, the participants have special powers or attitudes. Here the special power comes from Einstein's energy-momentum-mass relation, which will be the magic wand leading students toward the solution of the puzzle. “Particle Hunters” is an educational environment designed to promote a deeper understanding of specific aspects of Special Relativity and to foster empathy and critical thinking along the learning process.

Integrating Einsteinian physics into school curricula has become a challenge for researchers. This process involves choosing
appropriate disciplinary knowledge to be accommodated in the curriculum and researching ways to illustrate how teachers can use this knowledge
in their classrooms. The Einstein-first project research is centered on building a new curriculum on Einsteinian physics (space, time, geometry,
gravity) in Western Australia and on teacher’s ability to embrace this modern paradigm and enhance their scientific and didactical knowledge.
My research is designed to trial a learning progression of Einsteinian concepts within an overall curriculum structure for year 7. Many
concepts related to Einstein’s theory of gravity will be included in association to the existing year 7 curriculum in Australia. I will
identify the primary challenges in design and implementation, which helps organize appropriate teacher professional learning to understand
and teach Einsteinian physics concepts. A series of 14 physics lessons were developed for the Year 7 Science curriculum in Western Australia.
The first three lessons introduce concepts of measurement, straight lines, Geometry, space (curved), time, nature of spacetime. The concept
of velocity, terminal velocity, acceleration, inertia and mass are then developed. Students then learn about Einstein’s conception of gravity
through the analysis of free-falling bodies and thought experiments. They use the spacetime simulator to investigate topics of general
relativity, the attractional force between masses and orbits in our Solar System. The learning progression ends with introducing black holes
and gravitational waves.

The research project “Moon Mapping” has been established in 2014 between the Italian and Chinese Governments to promote cooperation and exchange between students from both countries. The main aim is to analyze different kinds of remotely-sensed data collected over the Moon surface by the Chinese space missions Chang’E-1/2. The project coordination has been assigned to the Italian Space Agency for the Italian side and to the Center of Space Exploration, China Ministry of Education, for the Chinese side.
The results of the “Moon Mapping” project topic #1: “map of the solar wind ion” using data from Chang’E-1 satellite are summarized.
Chang’E-1 is a lunar orbiter, the revolution period is 2h and the orbit is polar. The satellite is equipped with two Solar Wind Ion Detectors (SWIDs) that are two perpendicular electrostatic spectrometers mapping the sky with 24 channels with a field of view of 15°x6° each.
The spectrometers can measure solar wind flux in the range 40eV/q – 17keV/q with an energy resolution of 8%.
The data collected by the two Solar Wind Ion Detectors are analyzed to characterize the solar wind flux and composition on the Moon surface, studying the large time variation due to to the Solar activity.
The data measured by Chang’E-1, as compared with the one measured in the same period by the electrostatic spectrometers onboard the ACE satellite, enrich the multi-messenger/multi-particle view of the Sun, gathering valuable information about the space weather outside the Earth magnetosphere.

Galaxies are huge physical systems with dimensions of many tens of thousands of light years. Thus, any change at the galactic center will be noticed at the rim only tens of thousands of years later.

Those retardation effects are neglected in the present-day galactic modelling used to calculate rotational velocities of matter in the rims of the galaxy and surrounding gas. The significant differences between the predictions of Newtonian instantaneous action at a distance and observed velocities are usually explained by either assuming dark matter or by modifying the laws of gravity (MOND). In this presentation, we will show that, by taking general relativity seriously without neglecting retardation effects, one can explain the radial velocities of galactic matter in the M33 galaxy without postulating dark matter.

In a previous paper (Asher Yahalom "Lorentz Symmetry Group, Retardation, Intergalactic Mass Depletion ‎and Mechanisms Leading to Galactic Rotation Curves" Symmetry 2020, 12(10), 1693; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym12101693) we have shown how the weak approximation to general relativity leads to a d'Alembert wave operator equation for the linear correction to the metric which has a well-known retarded solution and thus retardation arises in the general relativistic analysis.

It should be stressed that the current approach does not require that velocities are high; in fact, most galactic bodies (stars, gas) are substantially subluminal.

There is ample evidence that visible matter and detectable radiation make up only a small fraction of the mass of the universe, perhaps only a few percent.
Therefore, an urgent problem is to search for physical systems (models) for which the presence of dark matter is an intrinsic property.
One of such physical systems can be a ``null string'' gas (gas of thin tubes of a massless scalar field).
Earlier it was shown that the gravitational interaction between the elements of such a gas should lead to the appearance of mass in the scalar field (primary particles with nonzero rest mass are formed in the gas). By interacting gravitationally, primary particles can combine into more complex formations -- ``macro'' objects.

In this model, dark matter is formed by extremely numerous and spatially diverse structures with nonzero rest mass, which are formed in a gas of null strings as a result of gravitational interaction. An interesting problem is to study the gravitational field of such structures.

In the proposed work, the asymptotics of the gravitational field of primary particles with nonzero rest mass, which are formed in a gas of null strings as a result of gravitational interaction, is investigated.
It is shown that on time scales much larger than the time of one full cycle of oscillation of null strings forming a particle, or at distances much larger than the dimensions of the region inside which oscillations of interacting null strings occur, the gravitational field of such a particle is described by the Minkowski metric.

For dark matter particles in the Milky Way’s halo, an annual modulation in the interaction rate is expected by the revolution of the Earth around the Sun; the DAMA/LIBRA observation of an annual modulation signal compatible with expectations for about two decades is one of the most puzzling experimental results in the field. It has neither been confirmed nor ruled out in a model independent way, despite the impressive improvement in sensitivity in dark matter direct detection experiments based on new detector technologies combined with strong background suppression. ANAIS experiment, using 112.5 kg of sodium iodide as target, is taking data smoothly at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in Spain since August 2017 aiming at testing the observation by the DAMA/LIBRA experiment using the same target and technique.

The first results on the search for modulation in the ANAIS-112 experiment were derived from 157.5 kg·y of data; results from two years (220.7 kg·y) have been presented too and the preliminary analysis of three years (313.6 kg·y) are now available. The best fits for the modulation hypothesis give in all cases amplitudes compatible with zero for the [2-6] and [1-6] keV energy regions; the results, compatible with the absence of modulation, are in agreement with the expected sensitivity of 2.6σ for the accumulated exposure of three years; this supports the projected goal of reaching a 3σ sensitivity to the DAMA/LIBRA result for a five-year operation. Before unblinding the data, the whole analysis procedure was fixed, the background of the experiment thoroughly studied and the expected sensitivity evaluated.

Here, the ANAIS-112 experiment will be firstly described presenting the set-up, performance, and analysis methods. Then, the obtained results from the annual modulation analysis will be shown and their implications and the future prospects will be discussed.

Shells of matter sources with zero thickness play an important role in both electromagnetism and general relativity. They provide a useful laboratory for the exploration of new phenomena while at the same time they approximate smooth solutions such as domain walls . Thin shells are also useful in describing gravitational collapse or in constructing spherically symmetric vacuum solutions that avoid the presence of singularities. We demonstrate the existence of static, stable and thin spherical fluid shells in the Schwarzschild-Rindler-anti-de Sitter (SRAdS) spacetime. This provides us with an alternative to the well-known gravastar geometry where the stability emerges due to the combination of the repulsive forces of the interior de Sitter space with the attractive forces of the exterior Schwarzschild spacetime. In constrast, when it comes to the SRAdS spacetime, the repulsion that leads to stability of the shell comes from a negative Rindler term while the Schwarzschild and anti-de Sitter terms are attractive. We demonstrate the existence of such stable spherical shells for three cases of fluid shells with the appropriate equations of state, i.e. vacuum shell, stiff matter shell, and dust shell. To do so, we also identify the metric parameter conditions that need to be satisfied in order to have shell stability in each case. The vacuum stable shell solution in the SRAdS spacetime is consistent with previous studies by two of the authors that demonstrated the existence of stable spherical scalar field domain walls in the SRAdS spacetime.

We discuss in a unified manner many existing signals in cosmological and astrophysical data that appear to be in some tension ($2\sigma$ or larger) with the standard $\Lambda$CDM model as defined by the Planck18 parameter values. In addition to the well known tensions ($H_0$ tension, $S_8$ tension and $A_{lens}$ anomaly), there is a wide range of other less discussed less-standard signals at a lower statistical significance level than the $H_0$ tension which may also constitute hints towards new physics. Such signals include, hints for closed universe in the CMB, the cold spot anomaly indicating non-Gaussian fluctuations in the CMB, the hemispherical temperature variance asymmetry and other CMB anomalies, cosmic dipoles challenging the cosmological principle, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest Baryon Acoustic Oscillation anomaly, the cosmic birefringence in the CMB, the Lithium problem, oscillating force signals in short range gravity experiments. The goal of this presentation is to collectively present the current status of these signals and their level of significance, refer to recent resources where more details can be found for each signal and discuss possible generic theoretical approaches that can collectively explain the non-standard nature of these signals. In many cases the signals presented are controversial and there is currently debate in the literature on the possible systematics origin of some of these signals. However, for completeness we refer to all signals we could identify in the literature referring also to references that dispute their physical origin.

Gravitational waves are usually described in terms of a transverse and traceless (TT) tensor, which allows to introduce the so-called TT coordinates. However, another possible approach is based on the use of a Fermi coordinates system, defined in the vicinity of the world-line of an observer arbitrarily moving in spacetime. In particular, Fermi coordinates have a direct operational meaning, since they are the coordinates an observer would use to perform space and time measurements; indeed, using these coordinates the metric tensor contains (up to the required approximation level) only quantities that are invariant under coordinate transformations internal to the reference frame. Using this approach it is simple to emphasise that what an observer measures depends both on the background field where he is moving and, also, on his kind of motion. This is quite similar to what happens when we study classical mechanics in non inertial frames: inertial forces appear, depending on the peculiar motion of the frame with respect to an inertial one. We show that using Fermi coordinates the effects of a plane gravitational wave can be described by gravitoelectromagnetic fields: in other words, the wave field is equivalent to the action of a gravitoelectric and a gravitomagnetic field, that are transverse to the propagation direction and orthogonal to each other. In particular, the gravito-magnetic field acts on spinning particles and we show that, due to the action of the gravitational wave field a gravitomagnetic resonance may appear. We give both a classical and a quantum description of this phenomenon and suggest that it can be used as the basis for a new type of gravitational wave detectors.

Upcoming full-sky large-scale structure surveys such as Euclid can probe the primordial Universe. Using the specifications for the Euclid survey, we estimate the constraints on the inflation potential beyond slow-roll. We use mock Euclid and Planck data from fiducial cosmological models using the Wiggly Whipped Inflation (WWI) framework, which generates features in the primordial power spectrum. We include Euclid cosmic shear and galaxy clustering, with two setups (Conservative and Realistic) for the non-linear cut-off. We find that the addition of Euclid data gives an improvement in constraints in the WWI potential, with the Realistic setup providing marginal improvement over the Conservative for most models. This shows that Euclid may allow us to identify oscillations in the primordial spectrum present at intermediate to small scales.