The Vatican Specola promotes a scientific conference dedicated to Monsignor Georges Lemaître
Black holes, gravitational waves and spatio-temporal singularities
"Black holes, gravitational waves and spatio-temporal singularities": this is the theme of the scientific conference that will take place in Castel Gandolfo from 17 to 21 June. Promoted by the Vatican Observatory, scientific body of the Governatorate - and supported by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), one of the most important public research institutes in Italy - The international meeting is a reminder of the scientific legacy of Monsignor Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), the Belgian physicist who developed what is now known as the Big Bang theory.
To welcome the forty members, on Sunday evening, 16 June, the Jesuit brothers Guy J. Consolmagno and Father Gabriele Gionti, respectively director of the Vatican Specola and deputy director of the Vatican Specola for Castel Gandolfo. Sister Raffaella Petrini, Secretary General of the Governatorate of the Vatican City State, member of the Vatican Observatory Foundation will also be present. Participants included Nobel Prize winners Adam Riess and Roger Penrose; cosmologists and theoretical physicists Andrei Linde, Joseph Silk, Wendy Freedman, Licia Verde, Cumrun Vafa and Fields Medal winner Edward Witten.
The scholars will deepen the legacy of Monsignor Lemaître’s intuitions and discuss some fundamental themes: from the tension in the measurements of the Hubble constant, to the enigmatic nature of space-time singularities (including Big Bang and black holes), but also on gravitational waves and the search for quantum gravity and its connections with entanglement (fundamental link between particles constituting a quantum system, from English to entangle "impigliare, intricare") the foundations of quantum theory.
The main objective of the conference is to promote interaction between theoretical and observational cosmologists, offering an environment from which to draw reflections and new ideas.
In addition to the scientific debates and reports, the Vatican Specola has organized an information evening open to all those interested in the latest research results. This special conference will be held in Albano Laziale, on Friday evening, 21 June, and will be attended by Viviana Fafone of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and Gabriele Venziano of the Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire (CERN) and the Collège de France. The topics to be covered include black holes, gravitational waves and the Universe before the Big Bang.
The conference, dedicated to Monsignor Lemaître, is the second organized by the Vatican Specola. The first one took place in May 2017 and, even then, had as its theme: "Black holes, gravitational waves and singularities of space-time".
Monsignor George Lemaître (1894-1966) was professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. From 1960 to 1966 he was also president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Belonged to the Priestly Fraternity of the Friends of Jesus, founded by Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier. In 1927, Monsignor Lemaître solved the complicated equations of Einstein’s general relativity theory and explained that this motion was the result of the expansion of the Universe. Monsignor Lemaître’s studies on the singularities of black holes are also well known, especially with regard to the regularity of the Schwarzschild solution around the event horizon. However, it is his theory of the "primordial atom", now known as the "Big Bang" theory, that has made him famous. He understood that the expansion of the Universe implied that at some point in the past it must have passed through a state of very high energy density, like an "original atom" from which everything began. His study can be considered the forerunner of modern quantum gravity.
