Today, a JINR scientist Mark Shirchenko is heading for the North Pole. He is going to take part in the large-scale project of the State Corporation “Rosatom” – the educational expedition to the North Pole “Icebreaker of Discoveries 2022”. Participants of this project, talented schoolchildren from different parts of Russia, will head towards the northernmost point of our planet on the icebreaker “50 years of Victory” of Rosatomflot.

Children will not just see the endless ice, walruses, and polar bears. The expedition is being held from 17 to 28 July. Its programme includes 3 educational tracks such as “Discovering the Arctic”, “Discovering Technologies”, and “Discovering Ourselves”. In addition, besides lectures, the programme includes workshops, engineering and intellectual tournaments, the contest “Arcticvision”, trainings by the best trainers of the Rosatom Corporate Academy, and of course public talks with flight experts, including a JINR employee Mark Shirchenko.

Mark Shirchenko will hold the talk show “Physics by Sheldon Cooper” dedicated to his work on the translation of the TV series “The Big Bang Theory” as part of the project “Kuraj-Bombey”. It is believed that thanks to this translation version, the TV series has become popular in Russia. Moreover, thanks to Mark, physics in the sitcom is real. Mark will also talk about the most common scientific misconceptions and answer tricky questions from young intellectuals at a meeting held by him.

The expedition “Icebreaker of Discoveries 2022” is a joint project of the State Corporation “Rosatom” and the Big Break All-Russian competition for schoolchildren. Recently, another polar flight called “Icebreaker of Knowledge 2022” has been completed, in which winners of the intellectual competition “Homo Science Project” participated. At the closing ceremony of the first expedition, participants of the first expedition passed a trophy to participants of the next flight entitled “Icebreaker of Discoveries 2022”. 70 schoolchildren from 31 regions of Russia, who are winners of the Big Break All-Russian competition for schoolchildren implemented as part of the national project Obrazovanie (lit. “Education”), will go on this flight. The icebreaker “50 years of Victory” is one of the largest icebreakers in the world. The expedition will take the route: Murmansk – the North Pole – Franz Josef Land – Murmansk.