On Monday, 27th of November 2017 at the Rectorate at the University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Prof. Dr Remo Ruffini, the Director of the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network (ICRANet) and President of the Board of the International Relativistic Astrophysics Joint European PhD programme “IRAP-PhD” at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, presented a talk titled

The Puzzle of GRB 090510, GRB 130603B and GRB 170817A.

In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions known in the Universe, equaling all of the energy from the billions of galaxies in the known Universe, each galaxy consisting of hundreds of billions of individual stars. In view of their extreme energetics, GRBs have been detected at distance exceeding ten billion light years away from us. There is one GRB observed every single day by many X-ray and Gamma-ray telescopes, which has also been observed by their counterpart, the largest optical telescope in the world based in Chile. This allowed us to reach the knowledge of  the new physics processes occurring in the entire Universe.

Within the lecture, Prof. Ruffini presented for the very first time the results from the article titled “Early X-ray Flares in GRBs”, accepted only days ago by the most prestigious journal in the field of astrophysics, The Astrophysical Journal. These results fundamentally change our 40-year old understanding of gamma-ray bursts, which was started by the pioneering work “Introducing the black hole” by R. Ruffini and J.A.Wheeler.

The University of Tuzla and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics are honored that such a scientific discovery was for the first time in the world presented at our University.

After the lecture, in the presence of H.E.  the Ambassador of the Republic of Italy, Nicola Minasi, the  Scientific Attache Dr Paolo Battinelli, the university and faculty management, numerous academics as well as students and representatives of the government of Tuzla and Tuzla Canton, an Agreement of collaboration between the University of Tuzla and ICRANet was signed.

Prof. Ruffini said: “This corresponds to my dream, which is to promote the joint study of the Universe, based on the ideas of Einstein, in collaboration with scientists from all the countries of the Western Balkan region, promoting joint scientific endeavors in the region, which is very important to ICRANet, Italy and Europe as a whole. We have already recently signed the corresponding Agreement with the universities in Belgrade and Novi Sad, with plans on signing more agreements with other scientific institutions in the Western Balkans”. Prof. Dr Vedad Pašić, the Dean of the Faculty of natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Tuzla added: “We sincerely believe that this represents a whole new chapter of scientific research between our two friendly countries, as well as the first step of Bosnia and Herzegovina joining the broader family of ICRANet member States and Institutions”. The Rector of the University of Tuzla, Prof. Dr Nermina Hadžigrahić expressed her sincere hope that Bosnia and Herzegovina will become the first member State of ICRANet from the Western Balkans. Ambassador Minasi stated his full support to the activities of the University of Tuzla and ICRANet and after the signing ceremony further discussed the various possibilities of academic, cultural as well as economic collaborations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy with the representatives of the University of Tuzla.