The Excellent Research call in the Johannes Amos Comenius Programme (P JAC) is one of the most important Czech grant calls with a total allocation of CZK 12.2 billion, which aims to enable Czech research to reach European and global excellence. The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU) has achieved a significant success in this competition and will participate in the investigation of six projects out of the total of 26 projects that received funding in an extremely demanding evaluation process.
At the beginning of his New Year's speech, Director Michael Prouza thanked the employees at all three facilities for coping with the difficult situation in 2023, when owing to their joint efforts FZU managed to overcome all the difficulties.
On the night of June 19-20, 2021, visible light from a source 10 billion light-years away from Earth was captured by three telescopes. Two of them – robotic telescopes – are operated by Czech institutions – the D50, located in Ondřejov, is managed by the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, while the other, FRAM-ORM, is located on the Spanish island of La Palma. The third telescope, Mini-MegaTORTORA, is installed in Nizhny Arkhyz, Russia. An international team has published a study of this extraordinary source in the May issue of Nature Astronomy.
Does it make sense to publish a printed journal that deals with the promotion of physics? With this controversial question, the director of the Institute of Physics, Michael Prouza, opened a discussion on the future of the popularization of physics. The debate took place on Monday, October 24, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Československý časopis pro fyziku journal in a crowded hall of the SOLID21 building, and was followed by expert lectures on the history of physics and its popularization.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC (ELI ERIC) and Institute of Physics (FZU) of the Czech Academy of Sciences have signed agreements to integrate the Beamlines Facility into ELI ERIC. The 6th ELI ERIC General Assembly (GA) approved the agreement and endorsed key policies critical for future operations of ELI ERIC.
Unique Cherenkov telescopes have successfully been installed at the Ondřejov Observatory near Prague. There are two telescopes at the site, which are now the largest optical telescopes in the Czech Republic. They have been developed in the frame of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, and evaluated as performing telescopes in the high energy region above 1 TeV.
This year marks a decade since the European Commission and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports approved two unique laser research projects ELI Beamlines and HiLASE, which were both successfully implemented as part of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In celebration of the anniversary, an official meeting attended by the representatives of leading Czech and foreign institutions took place at ELI Beamlines in Dolní Břežany. In a video-call, it was also joined on-line by Gérard Mourou, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics and the initiator of the centre at the European level.
The amended Framework Education Programmes published on 1 February 2021 by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports introduced significant curriculum reduction for physics education in elementary schools. The Education Programme disregards, for example, Newton’s laws or the explanation of the transformations of different forms of energy.
Latest observation by GRANDMA network allows scientists to set limits on specific astrophysical phenomena. Astronomers were looking for gravitational waves to see events invisible to optical and radio telescopes.
One of the first batches of the planned weekly 50 000-piece productions will be delivered to the institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where researchers test samples for the presence of the coronavirus
Successful FZU scientific teams which deal with current scientific and technical challenges in the fields of nanoelectronics, photonics, magnetism, functional and bioactive materials and plasma technologies will join forces in this modern centre
The Institute of Physics has ranked among the group of prestigious European institutions having the right to use the certificate. However, it is important to realize that it does not end by gaining the award. On the other hand, to retain it our progress needs to be evaluated in regular intervals.
