The PTOLEMY project aims at detecting the Cosmological Relic Neutrinos, which are expected to be the oldest, among the particles of the Standard Model, witness of the beginning of the Universe. They were created or more correctly decoupled one second after the Big Bang when the temperature of the Universe was around one MeV. The Cosmological Standard Model predicts the density of those neutrinos to be, nowadays, 53 nu/cm^3 per flavour and the mean momentum of the order of 10-4 eV/c. The very low momentum of those particles make their detection one of the most, if not the hardest, experimental challenge of the modern experimental cosmology.
The detection of Relic Neutrinos would provide a screen shot on the first second of the Universe and so a unique experimental constraint on the Cosmological Standard Model. Any disagreement of the measurement form the prediction of the Cosmological Standard Model will generate extremely relevant consequences in any field of cosmology, astro-particle and particle physics. To meet such an ambitious goal the PTOLEMY experiment is planning to use cutting-edges results in many technological fields and is expected to push forward the limit of the technology in many areas of interest.