Life and Matter Sciences Activities

Physical Sciences

Climate change: Science, irreversibility, and commitment

J. Fidel González Rouco, research Professor at the Faculty of Physical Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid and the IGEO Institute of Geosciences (UCM-CSIC), was very clear in this conference, organized with the Royal Spanish Physical Society, when referring to climate change as an irreversible process that is caused by human activity. According to the speaker, the fundamental measures to curb climate change necessarily involve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Recognizing the great complexity of the problem, he considered it necessary that all institutions, starting with the public ones, estimate their emissions and develop reduction strategies as a necessary and exemplary step for the rest of society.  

Primordial black holes, dark matter, and gravitational waves

Juan García-Bellido, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Autonomous University of Madrid and researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the CSIC, assured in this conference that the direct detection of gravitational waves has opened the door to the exploration of a new dark component of the universe: primordial black holes. It is still discussed whether these constitute a significant fraction of dark matter or all of it. Now, with the development of new gravitational wave detectors, we begin to explore the universe in a new way that will undoubtedly bring many surprises. He stated that, for the first time, the origin of the universe could be within reach to systematic exploration with multi-messenger-type cosmological observations.

Thermonuclear Fusion as a massive, safe, and inexhaustible source of energy

Joaquín Sánchez, Director of the National Fusion Laboratory of the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research, assured that Spain is an industrial power in the field of fusion. "Our country occupies the third position in importance among technology providers for the construction of the ITER Project." During his lecture, organized together with CIEMAT, he commented that Spanish engineers are assuming a leading role in the design and construction of a project that, based in the French city of Cadarache, has in Barcelona the European Domestic Agency, responsible for the management of European Union contributions to ITER.  

Geology, life on Earth and in the Universe: Mars and beyond

Jesús Martínez-Frías, Head of the Research Group on Meteorites and Planetary Geosciences of the CSIC and Director of the Spanish Network of Planetology and Astrobiology of the Institute of Geosciences CSIC-UCM, explained in his lecture that there is more and more evidence that confirms that life, its emergence, evolution, and development, is intimately linked to its environment, its geological context. Martínez-Frías highlighted in this conference organized together with the Julio Palacios Chair (CSIC), that Spain is playing a pioneering and fundamental role both in the study of extraterrestrial matter, which allows us to understand our origins, as well as in the participation in missions and characterization of terrestrial analogs. 

The discovery of a supermassive object in the center of the Milky Way

Jon Marcaide, scholar of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, explained why half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, "discoverers" of the black hole associated with the compact radio source Sgr A* in the center of our galaxy. With their studies, Genzel and Ghez, have determined the mass of the black hole and our distance to it with the highest precision.