The documentary about NANOCOSMOS nominated for BICC awards

BICC is the acronym for “XXIX Bienal Internacional de Cine Científico Ronda-Madrid-México 2018”, the biennial international event for science movies. Our documentary “NANOCOSMOS: Un viaje a lo pequeño” has been selected as finalist in this contest within the category of “Science documentary”.

We are very proud to do our bit in science communication!  Even if we don’t get any prize, we acknowledge the jury for considering our movie for the contest.  We will stay tuned for the date of the ceremony. Let’s cross fingers!

Link to the BICC press release (in Spanish).

Horizon Europe: The New Search and Innovation Framework Programme: Challenges and Opportunities

Next week NANOCOSMOS will be in the workshop “Horizon Europe: The New Search and Innovation Framework Programme: Challenges and Opportunities“, organized in the Universidad Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the Spanish Science Research Council (CSIC) . With several panels, this meeting joins some of the relevant scientific and industrial players around new opportunities and challenges in Horizon Europe for the period 2021-2027. The program of the meeting overviews the three major pillars of the Commission’s proposal, covering all forms of innovation, global challenges through research and innovation for the uptake of innovative solutions in industry and society, as well as investigator driven high quality research and infrastructures.  NANOCOSMOS will be represented by one of its Principal Investigators, José Cernicharo, in the panel “The ERC in Horizon Europe – A Reflection on Interdisciplinarity and Multipotentialities.”

Ve la luz el documental “Nanocosmos: un viaje a lo pequeño”

ENGLISH VERSION BELOW

El documental, que cuenta en formato road-movie los entresijos del nacimiento de los granos de polvo en el espacio, está financiado por la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología – Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad y el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) y ha sido producido por la empresa LuzLux.

Tras seis meses de trabajo, el equipo formado por personal de CSIC y la productora LuzLux, entre otros, ha finalizado el documental “Nanocosmos: un viaje a lo pequeño”, una película de carretera que habla del reto tecnológico y humano que hay tras el desarrollo de instrumentación en el área de la astrofísica de laboratorio.

La historia se desarrolla en tres planos: el viaje del equipo de grabación desde Madrid hasta Toulouse, los experimentos de laboratorio explicados por sus responsables y el propio viaje de los granos de polvo cósmico desde que nacen en la envoltura de una estrella evolucionada hasta que pasan a formar parte de algo mucho más grande (una estrella, un planeta o, por qué no, un ser vivo).

Este trabajo quiere transmitir las expectativas de los equipos que luchan por comprender este proceso, el reto tecnológico y humano que supone construir máquinas complejas y lograr reproducir en un laboratorio lo que ocurre en el espacio. El documental, de 40 minutos de duración, circulará por circuitos de cine científico y canales específicos de divulgación científica durante un año, tras lo que estará disponible en la página web de Nanocosmos.

En este enlace podrán ver el tráiler que anuncia el documental, que está disponible en español  con subtítulos en inglés y en francés. También hay una versión con subtítulos en español para personas con discapacidad auditiva.

ENGLISH VERSION

After six months of work, the team formed by CSIC staff and the LuzLux production company, among others, has completed the documentary “Nanocosmos, un viaje a lo pequeño” (a journey to the origins of dust grains), a road movie which talks about the technological and human challenge that lies behind the development of instruments in the area of Laboratory Astrophysics.

The story unfolds in three levels: the journey of the recording team from Madrid (Spain) to Toulouse (France), the laboratory experiments explained by its principal investigators and the journey of the cosmic dust grains since they are born in the envelope of an evolved star until they become part of something bigger (a star, a planet or, why not, a living being).

This work wants to transmit the expectations of the teams struggling to understand this process, the technological and human challenge involved in building complex machines whith a goal: to reproduce in a laboratory what happens in space. The 40-minute documentary will circulate along circuits of scientific movies and specific science channels for a year, and after that it will be available on the Nanocosmos’ website.

In this link you can see the trailer announcing the documentary. The movie is available in Spanish with subtitles in English and French.

Astrochemistry Insights in Science Magazine, by Christine Joblin and José Cernicharo

Cone Nebula (NGC 2264) Credits: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA.

Detecting the building blocks of aromatics” is the title of this “Insight” written by Christine Joblin and José Cernicharo (both NANOCOSMOS PIs together with J.A. Martín Gago) and talking about the history and importance of the work published by Brett A. McGuire et al. (“Detection of the aromatic molecule benzonitrile (c-C6H5CN) in the interstellar medium“) in the “Science Magazine” (12/01/2018).

This is the summary of the article from C. Joblin and J. Cernicharo:

“Interstellar clouds are sites of active organic chemistry. Many small, gasphase molecules are found in the dark parts of the clouds that are protected from ultraviolet (UV) photons, but these molecules photodissociate in the external layers of the cloud that are exposed to stellar radiation (see the photo). These irradiated regions are populated by large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with characteristic infrared (IR) emission features. These large aromatics are expected to form from benzene (C6H6), which is, however, difficult to detect because it does not have a permanent dipole moment and can only be detected via its IR absorption transitions against a strong background source (2). On page 202 of this issue, McGuire et al. (3) report the detection of benzonitrile (c-C6H5CN) with radio telescopes. Benzonitrile likely forms in the reaction of CN with benzene; from its observation, it is therefore possible to estimate the abundance of benzene itself”.