The VIII Moscow Festival “NAUKA 0+”, in which the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research will take part, will be held on 12-14 October 2018 and will be the largest in its history. Major events of the Festival will be held on the bases of the MSU Fundamental Library and the Residential Complex “Shuvalovsky” as well as in the Pavilion of the Expocentre. As usual, the exposition of the Institute will be placed in the two most prestigious sites of the Festival in Moscow, namely in the MSU Fundamental Library and the Expocentre. In the frames of the Golden Lecture Course, the lecture by Yu.Ts. Oganessian on discovery of new superheavy elements of the Periodic table and the lecture by V.D. Kekelidze on challenges of the megascience project NICA will be delivered.

The “NAUKA 0+” Festival was established and held for the first time in MSU in 2006, in 2011, it acquired the status of All-Russian. All these years, the scientific staff of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has been delivering lectures and reports, and since 2016, JINR has been presenting its exposition interactive stands.

The theme of the Festival in 2018 is “Megascience: Russia in the world and Russia for the world”. The Festival will help understand why countries unite and spend billions of dollars on scientific projects and megafacilities, and how megascience discoveries influence our lives. It is of great importance that the megascience project collider NICA is being constructed now in Dubna.

The programme and exhibit items of the JINR stand in MSU are aimed at adults, including students. The lecture by Yu.Ts. Oganessian will be held on 13 October at 11:00 AM and the lecture by V.D. Kekelidze is set on 13 October at 12:15 PM in the MSU Fundamental Library.

Layouts of the following operating and future JINR facilities will be presented at the JINR exposition stand in the Fundamental Library:

• the MPD detector (Multi-Purpose Detector) aimed at carrying out experiments at the NICA accelerating complex (VBLHEP JINR),
• the U-400 cyclotron (FLNR JINR) at which new superheavy elements are synthesized,
• Deep underwater neutrino telescope used in the Baikal experiment, as well as
• real optical module of this experiment (DLNP JINR),
• the Medico-Technical Complex of DLNP JINR used for treatment of oncology diseases by the proton therapy.

In the Residential Complex “Shuvalovsky”, Valery Shvetsov will deliver the lecture on the search for water on the Mars using the neutron detector developed with participation of Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics JINR. Dmitry Naumov will report on the research on dark matter in the Universe. Nikolai Anfimov will tell the participants about the profession of a scientific staff member and engineer of JINR as well as the most interesting projects implemented nowadays in the Insititute. Mark Shirchenko will deliver the lecture on research and registration of neutrino.

The site in the Expocentre is aimed at younger science fans. Staff members of the Institute have prepared a diverse programme: workshops and physical experiments that will be provided non-stop at the stand during the festival. The following JINR staff members will deliver lectures for school students and adults in the Conference Hall of the Expocentre:

Sergei Shvidky will report on treatment of oncology diseases in MTC DLNP using protons, Konstantin Khramko will explain how to analyze the air condition using research on moss, the lecture by Tatiana Bulanova will be devoted to radiation biology, and Sergei Merts will tell the participants the truth about colliders and about a large-scale megascience project of the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Enegy Physics – the NICA accelerating complex. Olga Gaponova will explain to elementary school children what sound is. Follow the up-to-date schedule of lectures on the website of the festival “NAUKA 0+”.

The State University “Dubna” will participate in the Festival for the first time. Its exposition stand will be placed next to that of JINR. In the frames of the joint exposition stand, a new project of the University and JINR will be presented. That is the Higher Engineering and Technical School that will educate elite engineers for working in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, first of all. It should be noted also that the Univeristy “Dubna” will be a regional platform of the Festival “Nauka 0+” for the first time this year .

We kindly invite science fans – adults and children, school students and students, high-school students choosing the future career – to attend exposition stands and lectures of JINR at the All-Russian Festival of Science in Moscow from 12 to 14 October. It will be fun!

Background information:

Major events of the Festival will be held from 12 to 14 October in Moscow where a Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, also famous as a scientific consultant to the Oscar-winning film “Interstellar”, will deliver the lecture. The central regional sites of this year are Belgorod (21 – 22 September), Murmansk (9 – 10 November) and Krasnoyarsk (7 – 8 December). The total number of regions participating in the Festival this year is 80.

The heart of the Festival “NAUKA 0+” keeps to be in Moscow. The VIII Moscow Festival will be the largest in its history:

There will be more central sites. In addition to traditional sites, namely the Fundamental Library, the Residential Complex “Shuvalovsky” and the Expocentre, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Digital Business Space will welcome participants of the Festival for the first time.

The number of visitors is expected to exceed 880,000 for the first time.

The motto of the Festival remains unchanged – “Make your discovery!”. These words reflect the meaning of the event, its purpose. The festival of science is designed to involve children from the early age in scientific and innovative activities, to make them feel like scientists, engineers, inventors, to evoke their interest and love for science, to educate a new generation of advanced Russian scientists and to increase the prestige of this profession.