PRESS RELEASE
June 11, 2024
SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE “BLACK HOLES, GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND SPACE-TIME SINGULARITIES” AT THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY
TO CELEBRATE THE SCIENTIFIC LEGACY OF
MSGR. GEORGES LEMAÎTRE: THE PRIEST WHO CORRECTED EINSTEIN
What is the true nature of Space and Time? How could we reconcile the laws of Quantum Mechanics with Einstein’s General Relativity that governs the behavior of the gravitational field in the early moments of the Universe, the Big Bang? What are space- time singularities telling us about the nature of our Universe?
These and other questions will be at the center of the discussions at the scientific conference “Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Space-Time Singularities” to be held at Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory) in Castel Gandolfo from June 16 to June 21, 2024. Among the 40 participants at the meeting are Nobel Laureates Adam Riess and Roger Penrose; cosmologists and theoretical physicists Andrei Linde, Joseph Silk,Wendy Freedman, Licia Verde, Cumrun Vafa and the Fields Medal recipient Edward Witten.
This conference celebrates the scientific legacy of Msgr. Georges Lemaître, the Belgian physicist who developed what is now known as the theory of Big Bang. It is the second such conference at the Vatican Observatory; the first was in 2017. As at the first conference, the aim will be to encourage a fruitful interaction among participants from both theoretical and observational cosmology, and to create a stimulating environment for the emergence of new and provocative ideas, and research directions, in contemporary cosmology. In the current edition the main themes to be discussed will revolve around the perplexing Hubble tension, the enigmatic nature of spacetime singularities encompassing the Big Bang and black holes, the gravitational waves, and the tantalizing pursuit of quantum gravity and its connections with entanglement and the foundations of Quantum Theory.
Msgr. George Lemaître (1894-1966) was Professor of Physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. From 1960 to 1966, he served also as President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. A dedicated priest, he belonged to the Priestly Fraternity of Friends of Jesus, founded by Cardinal Mercier, Bishop of Malines. By the 1920s, astronomical observations had revealed a mysterious recession motion of distant galaxies. In 1927, by solving the complicated equations of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory, Lemaître explained that this motion was a result of the expansion of the Universe. This was before Edwin Hubble’s observations establishing a relation, called the “Hubble Law,” which connects the speed of recessional motion to galactic distances. For this reason, in 2018, the International Astronomical Union voted that the “Hubble Law” be re-named the “Hubble- Lemaître Law”.
Msgr. Lemaître’s studies on black hole singularities, especially regarding the regularity of the Schwarzschild solution around the event horizon, are also quite famous. And most famous, as mentioned, is his theory of “The Primeval Atom”, known today as the theory of the “Big Bang”. He understood that the expansion of the Universe indicated that at some point in the past the Universe must have been in a state of high energy density, compressed in a point, like an original atom from which everything started. His theory can be considered as the forerunner of modern Quantum Gravity.
This Vatican Observatory conference is centered on the modern legacy of Lemaître’s scientific intuitions. The conference is also supported by the INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare/ National Institute for Nuclear Physics), one of the most important Italian public research institutes.
This year the Vatican Observatory decided to organize also an outreach event open to all the people interested in knowing more about the latest results in this very active field of research.Viviana Fafone (University of Roma Tor Vergata and INFN) and Gabriele Venziano (CERN and Collège de France) will speak about Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and the Universe before the Big Bang. The conference (in Italian) will be in Albano Laziale, on the evening of Friday, June 21.
More information about the conference is available at: www.vaticanobservatory.va and at https://indico.cern.ch/e/lemaitre2024
Contact: Christopher M. Graney, Vatican Observatory and Vatican Observatory Foundation - c.graney@vaticanobservatory.org
SPECOLA VATICANA, Castel Gandolfo - 00120 STATO CITTA’ DEL VATICANO
F a i t h I n s p ir in g S cien ce
