On 30 July, for the fourth time, JINR specialists took part in the Geek Picnic festival dedicated to modern technologies, science, and art. In 2022, the Museon Arts Park in Moscow became the venue for the Festival.

Scientists of the Institute participated in the educational part of the event and delivered popular science lectures. In the lecture zone “Science and Space”, Sergey Merts, a senior researcher at VBLHEP, introduced the guests to the NICA mega-science project, described the features of the collider, and told how NICA will help scientists look into the past. In the same lecture zone, a DLNP senior researcher Mark Shirchenko spoke about the physics of neutrinos. His lecture included a historical journey of almost 100 years back into the past, to the time of neutrino discovery, and also took the audience into the future, describing the plans of scientists to study this elementary particle.

Head of an FLNP sector Inga Zinicovscaia gave a speech in the lecture zone “Ecology”. Inga introduced the audience to organisms that act as biomonitors – mosses and mollusks. The guests learned how to purify polluted water using brewer’s yeast and how metal nanoparticles affect people’s health.

In the IT/AL lecture zone, a LIT researcher Igor Pelevanyuk told the audience how computers help scientists process large amounts of scientific data, how processors have evolved over the past 50 years, and why modern supercomputers consist of thousands of processors.

The lectures sparked great interest among the audience, and the speakers had to answer numerous questions. In total, more than 150 people attended the lectures by the JINR scientists.

Also, the guests of the Festival were able to see the parade of fantastic electric vehicles, visit the VR zone to get acquainted with various metauniverses, see the most unusual projects in the startup zone, ride a 7-meter electric turtle, chat with a fisherman robot, etc.