NICE

The NICE (Nici’s Icy Collision Experiment) project investigates the collision processes of water-ice pebbles under conditions that resemble those in the early solar system. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to the formation of planetesimals and, ultimately, planets.

The experiments are conducted in a specially designed vacuum chamber. This chamber enables controlled conditions of low pressure and low temperatures, allowing collisions between ice particles to be studied as realistically as possible. Using precise measurement techniques, the collision processes are recorded and analyzed to gain fundamental insights into the growth and evolution of bodies within the protoplanetary nebula.

The experiment is currently still in the trial and testing phase. At this stage, trials are being carried out with dust particles in order to check the experimental setup and validate the basic principles of operation.

Once these tests have been successfully completed, experiments will then be carried out with water-ice pebbles, which represent the actual research objective of the work.