Renowned physicists, including two Nobel Prize winners, will gather on the Vatican Observatory near Rome next week to ponder the unresolved mysteries of the cosmos and to honor the legacy of Georges Lemaître, the priest who first theorized the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.
“We think we now have put together a dream team that we vehemently hope will result in some revolutionary pondering,” said Fabio Scardigli, a theoretic physicist from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan and one in every of the organizers of the event, during a news conference Tuesday presenting the meeting.
The workshop June 16-21 will bring together experts from two sides of the scientific community: those that study cosmology and the idea of relativity, and people physicists who study quantum theory. Organizers of the event hope that the gathering will foster dialogue about these two different and at times irreconcilable theories.
“Among the goals of this conference is to take small steps, through discussion and debate, to reconcile these two theoretic constructions of the twentieth century,” Scardigli said.
The Vatican Observatory, called Specola Vaticana, was established in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII to advertise dialogue between faith and science. Forty physicists will participate on the gathering, including Adam Riess, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for proving that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and Roger Penrose, who won the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking study of black holes.
Participants also include Andrei Linde and Joseph Silk, who revolutionized cosmology through their studies on the primary moments of the universe; Wendy Freedman, known for her groundbreaking research on the expansion of the universe; Licia Verde, an authority on dark matter and energy; Cumrun Vafa, who is taken into account a trailblazer for his studies on geometry and quantum physics; and Edward Witten, best known for his pioneering contributions to string theory.
Participants are scheduled to fulfill with Pope Francis on the Vatican on June 19, and organizers consider the pope will deliver a speech.
While the Vatican might strike some as an unlikely partner for the advancement of science, the Catholic Church has played a key role in the sector of physics throughout history. “I used to be a scientist for 20 years before I joined the Jesuits, and essentially the most common response from fellow scientists was a freedom from them to inform me concerning the churches they belong to,” said Brother Guy Consolmagno, the director of the Vatican Observatory, throughout the news conference.
“In the sector of cosmology, where we’re a lot aware of what we have no idea, there may be an openness to reflect on why there’s something as an alternative of nothing,” Consolmagno said, adding that “in the tutorial world you discover more atheists within the literature department than amongst physicists.”
The verdant setting of Castel Gandolfo, where the Specola resides, offers a neutral ground for scientists to debate theories, present their research and studies and butt heads on the cosmos’s conundrums, organizers said.
“It’s a spot where scientists, researchers and academics can be at liberty to talk unencumbered by academic structures where they’re sure to at least one form of theoretical current or one other,” said the Rev. Gabriele Gionti, the vice director on the observatory.
In 2022, Gionti and the Rev. Matteo Galaverni, a priest within the Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla in northern Italy, theorized a recent option to study gravity after the Big Bang. Their study was highly regarded within the scientific community and published in the distinguished Physical Review D journal. Gionti’s life work has been to try to reconcile quantum physics and cosmology, following within the footsteps of one other influential physicist and priest: Lemaître.
Born in Belgium in 1894, Lemaître was an innovator in the sector of physics and theology, having joined the Priestly Fraternity of the Friends of Jesus. In 1927, he proved that the universe was expanding before Edwin Hubble, which led Lemaître to theorize the existence of “the primeval atom,” when the universe should have been compressed before the Big Bang.
That same 12 months, the primary theories on quantum physics emerged, difficult our understanding of the universe. Lemaître, whose studies outlined what would later be described as quantum gravity, was a friend of Albert Einstein, despite Einstein’s opposition to the idea of an expanding universe and quantum physics. Recognition of Lemaître’s lasting impact has been growing recently, with the International Astronomical Union voting in 2018 that the Hubble Law, which describes the speed at which galaxies are moving away from Earth, ought to be renamed the Hubble-Lemaître Law.
Quoting St. John Paul II, Consolmagno described faith and reason as two wings leading toward the reality. “Truth is the goal,” he said, “and for those of us who consider that God is the reality, exploring the reality leads us closer to God.”
© Religion News Service
