Starmus, Day 1: A Big Bang for the brain!
I have people!
Still in Tenerife, today at the Starmus Festival. Not really the kind of festival you're used to: Starmus combines astrophysics, fundamental physics and music. Didn't you know anything about it? Well, I'm still not there until this year, but I'm already here to talk about it!
In short, this is a congress where the world's best and most illustrious scientists present formal presentations and when they stand on the sidelines, they also discuss in a very informal way about stars, the cosmos and the microcosm or whatever else is their particular niche to which they have dedicated their lives.
Let us make the big names: Stephen Hawking, probably the world's leading science star, a physicist-cosmologist who gave his name to scientific theories; Brian May, Queen guitarist and also astrophysicist; Brian Eno, pioneer of ambient music, member of Roxy Music, U2 producer and thought leader; astronaut Alexey Leonov, Soviet hero and first man to walk in space and many others....
Final preparations for the conference:
The room is overhanging:
More than a thousand guests were present among the audience. Wow: with tickets at a cost of 700 euros (congress & show) if purchased at the box office, or 500 in advance, and 250 for students... it is estimated that the organizers have earned us a nice coat of arms.
Virtually everyone stood up to try to take a picture (at Steve Hawking, of course!) when he entered the hall. Well, I'm a fan of him, but I don't really need a photo of him live and from afar, when there's a lot on the net and in short, what do I need a photo of him? His ideas are the bomb.... but divinity. With old age I become irritable:).
Once everyone had had their own dose of photos taken by celebrities, it was time to settle in for the main event: the exhibitions!
Starmus. Day 1.
That is who spoke today:
Adam Riess
American Astrophysicist and Nobel physics in 2011. He told us about the expansion speed of the Universe. How it is studied, which measuring instruments are used, and what results have surprised them but they still fail to understand. Curiously, the phrase âWe do not knowâ was repeatedly spoken during his speech. Respect.
Brian Greene
Theoretical American and theoretical physicist of strings. He spoke to the public animatedly and comprehensively about strings, but also about the multiverse and its relationship with the one to the other and about the strange and wonderful theories that abound but which, he says,"I don't share! Overall, a super exposure.
An excited explanation about the nature of the Big Bang in terms of multiverse bubbles:
Robert Woodrow Wilson
American astronomer and Nobel physicist in 1978. He told us everything about the cosmic background radiation and how it was discovered. Very interesting. It's fantastic how they managed to make a giant scientific discovery of this kind with today's very primitive tools. He was particularly proud to announce how their observations coincided with theoretical calculations.
Barry Barish
American experimental physicist. There is no doubt that he is (justly) waiting for his Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational waves.
He told us everything about gravitational waves: where does the theory of them and its theoretical basis derive from. Then he talked to us about how they practically confirmed the theory with their devices and measuring instruments (for this they had to place four kilometers of tube almost in the vacuum). Really cool. Being a pragmatic type, I personally do not see any commercial value (even in one hundred years) in this fundamental scientific discovery, but for the demonstration of an old theory, so much hat-like (especially for those who financed it:).
Robert J. Sawyer
Canadian science fiction writer. A funny discussion about the responsibility of science fiction towards.... the future! Anyone can predict what the cars of the future look like: only the science fiction writer can predict things like traffic jams. It provided many examples of this type and were all welcomed. However, somebody was lost: the Internet was widely predicted, but were the problems related to it too?
Peter Schwartz
Futurist, innovator and American writer (there is someone who doesn't come from North America?:). An IA expert (ehm, interesting topic). He told us about the "Little IA" which is a button on a site that makes a lot of things simultaneously, and also about the "Real IA", which will not be with us yet for a nice piece.
Joel Parker
American astronomer and physicist and great head of the Rosetta Mission and New Horizons. He talked at length about these two projects: how the space missions started, what was discovered again, what beautiful photos they took, and even a Rosetta selfie with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in the background! A fascinating tale. I'm still bewildered.
Steve Balbus
American Astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at Oxford. His presentation:"Why the fish came out of the water". It turns out that it was caused by the gravitational force of the moon and sun, which causes high and low tide and during the Devonian, a given fish needed to survive not only in the water but also on the shore. To this end, they have become amphibians.
Curiously, I heard a similar story from a diver in Australia, who was also an astronomer (amateur:).
That, I have to say, was a rather boring speech. Fortunately, the only one.
Here is a photo all together, there are also me:
At the end of the first day, one thing came to my mind....
As I have already said, practically all the speakers came from the United States. But what do we expect? Obviously Europeans, Indians and Chinese people are studying physics, astrophysics and the rest, but there is a country at the forefront that invests seriously in those studies, only one country: the United States of America. Again, chapeau.
Every intervention, even the most boring, was great. So exhaustive and even honest. Each of them: what they have done, how, which questions remain unanswered, what still needs to be done.... I like it.
Tomorrow people, with more from the Starmus!