The meeting will also honour Georges Lemaître, the priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory.

The event, scheduled for 16-21 June, will feature 40 leading experts in cosmology, relativity and quantum theory. The gathering aims to foster dialogue and find common ground between these often-conflicting scientific fields.

"We think we have put together a dream team that we vehemently hope will lead to some innovative thinking" said Fabio Scardigli, a theoretical physicist from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan and one of the event's organisers.

Established in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, the Vatican Observatory, known as Specola Vaticana, seeks to promote dialogue between faith and science.

The conference is part of this ongoing mission.

Key participants include:

• Nobel laureates Adam Riess and Roger Penrose
• Andrei Linde and Joseph Silk, pioneers in cosmology
• Wendy Freedman, known for her research on the universe's expansion
• Licia Verde, an expert in dark matter and energy
• Cumrun Vafa, renowned for his studies in geometry and quantum physics
• Edward Witten, a leading figure in string theory

Openness to reflect

On 19 June, participants will meet with Pope Francis who is expected to deliver a speech.

Brother Guy Consolmagno, the director of the Vatican Observatory, highlighted the Church's historical contributions to physics.

"I was a scientist for 20 years before I joined the Jesuits, and the most common reaction from fellow scientists was a freedom from them to tell me about the churches they belong to" he said.

Consolmagno also noted that there is an openness to reflect on existential questions in fields like cosmology.

The observatory in Castel Gandolfo offers a neutral ground for scientists to engage in unencumbered dialogue.

"It's a place where scientists, researchers and academics can feel free to speak unencumbered by academic structures where they are bound to one type of theoretical current or another" said Rev. Gabriele Gionti, the observatory's vice- director.

Hubble-Lemaître Law

In 2022, Gionti and Rev Matteo Galaverni, a priest from Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, proposed a new way to study gravity after the Big Bang. Their work was well-received in the scientific community, emphasising the ongoing relevance of the Vatican's scientific contributions.

Georges Lemaître, born in Belgium in 1894, was a significant figure in physics and theology. His early work on the expanding universe laid the groundwork for what would later be known as quantum gravity.

Despite initial opposition from Albert Einstein, Lemaître's theories have gained recognition, with the International Astronomical Union renaming the Hubble Law to the Hubble-Lemaître Law in 2018.

Quoting St John Paul II, Consolmagno stated "Truth is the goal, and for those of us who believe that God is the truth, exploring the truth leads us closer to God".

The conference seeks to build on Lemaître's legacy, bridging gaps between diverse scientific theories in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the universe.

Sources

Religion News Service

Fathers Gabriele Gionti, SJ, and Matteo Galaverni introduced the new and promising mathematical tool in a 2022 article published in the prestigious journal Physical Review D.

The pair have recently published a new article in the European Physical Journal C, which presents novel research results in theoretical and experimental physics.

"It really is fascinating to try to understand the physical laws in the early moments of the universe. The search for new physical laws and the effort to fully understand them is a process that fills our minds and hearts with great joy," the priests said in a Vatican Observatory publication released March 14.

Read More

Included in the list are three Jesuits who have worked at the Vatican Observatory and one Pope with importance to the history of the Observatory.

562971 Johannhagen is named for Fr Johann Hagen (1847-1930), who was director of the Vatican Observatory from 1906-1930.

551878 Stoeger is named for Fr Bill Stoeger (1943-2014), who was a cosmologist at the Vatican Observatory and a notable theologian in the area of theology and science.

565184 Janusz is named for Fr Robert Janusz (b. 1964), who formally joined the observatory just a few years ago, but has actively collaborated with the work of the institution (in particular, reducing VATT images) for several decades.

The asteroid named for a Pope is 560974 Ugoboncompagni. Ugo Boncompagni is the birth name of Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585).

Read More

Jesuit Father Richard Boyle discovered the existence of a new object, named "2021 XD7," in the outer solar system past Neptune, and Jesuit Father Richard D'Souza co-authored a new study identifying a previously unknown dwarf galaxy, named Pontus, that merged with Earth's home galaxy of the Milky Way.

The Vatican Observatory made the first announcement February 2, saying Father Boyle discovered the new object in early December after his observations were analysed by Kazimieras Cernis, a Lithuanian astronomer and astrophysicist.

Read More

The new website has hundreds of resources on faith and science.

The observatory has also started a podcast that explores "the wonder of God's universe". Vatican astronomers and expert guests contribute to the podcasts.

Jesuit Br. Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, says the observatory's old website "was hardly ever visited."

"The mission of the Vatican Observatory, articulated by Pope Leo XIII back in 1891, is to show the world that the Church supports science. And while we've done a pretty good job of doing the science, I know we've been less successful at ‘showing the world,'" Consolmagno says.

Dating back to 1582, the Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest active astronomical observatories in the world.

Its headquarters are in Castel Gandolfo, a town near Rome.

The observatory also has a research group at the University of Arizona. There, in partnership with the university, the observatory constructed the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) on Mount Graham. It began operation in 1993.

Consolmagno says plans for the observatory's new website have been underway for well over a year.

He says when he meets people he often finds they are unaware that the Vatican has an observatory.

"The message we have for the general public can be quite detailed," he says, referencing the website's Faith and Science resource center.

"But frankly, the mere awareness that we exist, a modern astronomical observatory supported by the Vatican (and by donations to our Foundation), says everything essential that needs saying."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Jesuits in Britain

In the pages of the Italian daily La Repubblica, he revealed that he venerates "the God of joy" through science.

The American astronomer spoke about the possibility of "another life than our own in the universe": other places, including in our solar system, have all the ingredients to make life possible as we know it on Earth … we know that they are places where it is worthwhile to send spatial missions . . . It's worthwhile to make an effort to find the proofs. All science begins by this form of ‘faith.'"

As for the possibility to enter into contact with extra-terrestrial intelligences, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with them.

All things considered, we sometimes find it very difficult to communicate, including with members of our family.

Would you baptize an alien? "Only if it asks me,' answered Brother Consolmagno.

He mentioned the present mistrust vis-s-vis science. "There is great fear of the truth in our days, even the truth of love.

"As children, we learn that all there is to be known we can read in books, but when we mature, we realize that everything that we learn leads to new questions. The more we know, the more we understand that we don't know."

"The error is to think that our objective is to find 'answers.' The real objective is to always have more confidence with these questions. If you think that your wife is ‘a problem to solve,' your marriage is probably in a grave crisis.

"We should think of science and religion as ways of learning to know truths without one ever arriving at an end," he said.

"Science is a wonderful way to experience a sentiment of intimacy with Creation and by it, to become intimate with the Creator," he affirmed again. Continue reading

Sources

• Zenit article by Anne Kurian
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

Pope Francis called for the conference.

The agenda the world leading scientists, astrophysicists, cosmologists and other experts are discussing includes "black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities".

Research papers include titles such as "Strong evidence for an accelerating universe"; "Black hole perturbations: a review of recent analytical results"; and "Observing the Signature of Dynamical Space-Time through Gravitational Waves".

Observatory director, Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ said the conference offers an opportunity to show the world the Catholic Church "supports good science."

It's not a matter of science versus faith either, he suggests. "If you have no faith in your faith, that is when you will fear science,"

He also noted the "creative act of God is not something that happened 13.8 billion years ago. It's something that happens continually.

"Those of us that are religious, will recognize the presence of God, but you don't have to make a theological leap to search for the truth," Consolmagno said.

"There are many things we know we do not understand. We cannot be good religious people or scientists if we think that our work is done."

Consolmagno said the Vatican hopes the conference "will also be an encounter of people with very different opinions but very close friendships that come from having the same common desire to understand the truth of the universe and how we can understand that truth".

Source

• Independent
• Christian Today
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: The Catholic Sun

Consolmagno is a Jesuit brother and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

He'll discuss the interface between science and humanity, our place in the universe and what it means to us if life is found out there.

The one-day festival, called Is There Life Out There?, follows a similar event last year organised by the island-based Awana Rural Women group, which attracted around 12 per cent of the island's residents.

Other speakers include, top US planetary scientist Dr Faith Vilas, and Gino Acevedo, the Weta Digital creative art director behind such films as Avatar and King Kong.

Also on the bill is Auckland University of Technology microbiologist Professor Steve Pointing, who worked with Nasa researching extreme lifeforms that survive in polar cold and desert heat.

The group's president, Gendie Somerville-Ryan, chuckled when asked how these heavyweights had been pulled to such a remote spot.

"Well, it's just never good luck is it?"

The group was fortunate to have among its members Dr Ann Sprague, a retired University of Arizona planetary scientist who had connections with Vilas and Consolmagno.

"So we did have an in there, but then it's not just about having a contact - it's that these people have to actually be willing to come, and they're even paying," Somerville-Ryan said.

"Partly I think it was the attraction of people being able to come to a small isolated community, where we are desperate for knowledge, basically."

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: sciencemag.org

Raised in Detroit, Michigan, he studied Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT for his bachelor's and master's degrees and at the University of Arizona for his doctorate.

During a break in his studies he spent two years teaching astronomy in Nairobi for the Peace Corps. Having attended a Jesuit high school, Consolmagno contemplated joining the church at several points in his career before joining the order in 1989.

Two years later, he was called to serve at the Vatican Observatory where he has been ever since. Consolmagno's research has always focused on the smallest bodies in our solar system and his work at the Vatican has allowed him to make significant contributions to this field over the past several decades.

In 2014, he was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal by the American Astronomical Society for outstanding communication of planetary science to the public.

You can keep up with Consolmagno's thoughts on work and life at the Vatican Observatory by reading his blog, following him on Twitter, and watching his TEDx talk.

I recently chatted with Brother Guy about his life in science and the church and what he's learned from moving between the two.

How did you get interested in science? Where it something that was always there?

I'm a Baby Boomer kid. I was in kindergarten when Sputnik went up and I was a senior in high school when we landed on the Moon. We just grew up with all that. You have to have been there to know how intense the whole focus on science and school kids was. Added to that, I had a lot of support from my parents, especially, my dad.

I had been very close with my dad all of my life. I'm the youngest of three and he's 98 and going strong. He was an early adapter in computers, so we chat over Skype or Facetime all the time. Continue reading

Sources

• Smithsonian Magazine, article by Summer Ash, Director of Outreach for Columbia University's Department of Astronomy.
• Image: Vatican Observatory Foundation

The unnamed guest posted on Mumsnet asking for advice after the bride - an ex-colleague - told her the financial donation of £100 had left her and the groom "surprised".

The message added: "In view of your own position, if you wanted to send any adjustment it would be thankfully received." Continue reading

But the constellation of early women astronomers is glowing brighter, writes Carol Glatz for Catholic News Service, with the recognition of four once nameless nuns who helped map and catalog half a million stars in the early 20th century.

Glatz reports that the nuns, Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri, were recruited by the Vatican to measure and map stars from plate-glass photographs. They cataloged the brightness and locations of a whopping 481,215 stars during their years of diligent work.

Photos of the nuns had appeared in books about the history of astronomy, but the identity of the women was not known—and their accomplishments not recognized—until now.

Their years of labor were finally acknowledged when Father Sabino Maffeo, a Jesuit priest who works at the Vatican Observatory, found their names while organizing papers for the archives.

Today, the project to which the nuns contributed is as obscure as the nuns themselves, but at the time it was one of the largest scientific undertakings in history.

In April 1887, 56 scientists from 19 countries met in Paris to embrace a new discipline: astrophotography. Their plan was a bold one—use 22,000 photographic plates to map the entire sky.

The work was split up among institutions across Europe and the United States, including the Vatican Observatory. Each institution was given a particular zone of the sky to map and categorize.

At the time, male astronomers often relied on women to serve as their "computers." The men would direct the project, but behind the scenes, women did the labor-intensive processing, cataloging and calculating for low wages.

Famously, Harvard Observatory director Edward Charles Pickering hired "Pickering's Harem," a group of bright young women, to do his share of the star cataloging. Also known as "the Harvard Computers," these women, formidable astronomical minds in their own right, were only recently acknowledged for their contribution to science. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• Smithsonian.com, an article by Erin Blakemore, a Boulder, Colorado-based author and historian.

Many well-known astronomers and astrophysicists think so, including Stephen Hawking, who in a recent interview said, "Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now science offers a more convincing explanation... I'm an atheist."

Other astronomers see no fundamental incompatibility between science and religious faith-including Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer and planetary scientist who is one of a dozen astronomers who works for the Vatican Observatory.

In an interview with HuffPost Science editor David Freeman, Brother Guy said he believes the antagonism between scientific principles and religious faith exists mostly among fundamentalists.

"I mean fundamentalists on both sides," he said, "because there are also science fundamentalists.

"And what is a fundamentalist? It's somebody who is clinging to the fundamentals of their truth because they don't have the confidence or the faith in their faith to be able to say, 'I'm settled, I'm happy with this, let's see where it goes.'

"Fundamentalism is a sign of fear."

To hear the full interview with Brother Guy-who is also the curator of the Vatican Observatory's meteorite collection and the author of a new book entitled Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial-click on the podcast link.

The interview was originally broadcast on Sharon, Connecticut radio stationWHDD/Robin Hood Radio.

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Image: Inside Higher Ed

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, who is the new president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, said news of such a discovery won't come as a big surprise.

Br Consolmagno said he hopes the questions about life on other planets will focus more on how humanity sees itself.

"When we say human, human as compared to what?" he asked.

While the discovery of life elsewhere will neither prove nor disprove the existence of God, Br Consolmagno expects it will open the door to ponder what form salvation history may take in other intelligent societies.

He addresses such questions in a new book, "Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? . . . and Other Strange Questions From the Inbox at the Vatican Observatory", set to be published in October.

He said there is no conflict between science and religion.

Continue reading