Life and Matter Sciences Events in 2019

Physics and Chemistry

Physical and Chemical Sciences carried out a good part of the Foundation's activities during 2019. Conferences were organized in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Valencia, the Royal Spanish Society of Physics, the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT), the Chair Julio Palacios of the CSIC, the Center for Pulsed Lasers and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC). Among other prominent speakers, the Nobel Prizes in Physics KLAUS VON KLITZING, GÉRARD MOUROU and ANTHONY LEGGETT, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, JOACHIM FRANK, participated in our activities. 

KLAUS VON KLITZING, 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics, spoke about the Quantum Hall Effect and the new SI system. He called for greater support for basic science. He also considered that scientists have a duty to maintain contact with the public because, otherwise, politicians will not support science.

GÉRARD MOUROU, 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, explained the properties of the Extreme-light laser.  Extreme-light laser is a universal source providing a vast range of high energy radiations and particles along with the highest field, highest pressure, temperature and acceleration. It offers the possibility to shed light on some of the remaining unanswered questions in fundamental physics like the genesis of cosmic rays with energies in excess of 1020 eV or the loss of information in black holes.

JOACHIM FRANK, 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, gave the lecture entitled Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy: the visualization of biological molecules in their native states. For decades, X-ray crystallography has been the only biophysical technique of visualization for biological macromolecules.  Molecules are tightly packed in a crystal and are not necessarily in a structural conformation that corresponds to one of their native, functional states.  Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has solved this problem, as a result of a confluence of advances and inventions in the areas of sample preparation, instrument design, and algorithm design/computation.  In this new era of structural biology, many more biological macromolecules can be visualized, and their structure solved at near-atomic resolution, and these structures represent the molecules in their true native states.

ANTHONY LEGGETT, 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics, illustrated us in his lecture What is superconductivity? about the phenomenon of superconductivity today and the strange behavior of a superconducting metal.

ÁLVARO DE RÚJULA (CERN) gave the lecture entitled Einstein's triumphs, errors and doubts. Though not akin to anyone else, Einstein was a human being. Thus, he had doubts. And he even made errors, some of them as fruitful as his greatest successes. In the 21st century --during which Einstein's megahits continue to gain strength— it may be interesting to talk about the undeniable genius from a not exclusively eulogistic point of view.

JUAN IGNACIO CIRAC (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics) titled his lecture Quantum computers: How, when and for what. He explained what the power of quantum computers is based on and how useful it will be and reviewed the current situation and prospects for moving from small prototypes to large facilities.

PABLO JARILLO HERRERO (MIT) explained how the strong interactions between electrons in 'magic angle' graphene, the "Twist and Shout" of quantum materials, as he called it, are leading to a new paradigm in the research of the most enigmatic phases of quantum materials, such as unconventional superconductivity or new topological states on the frontier of Physics.

ANTONIO ALBERDI, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), spoke about the first picture of a black hole, M87 *. The black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy showed an emission ring, more shinning in the southern part of the ring, surrounding darker central region, corresponding to the shadow of the black hole produced by the capture of photons in the event horizon.

GABRIELA GONZÁLEZ (Louisiana State University), explained the relationship between Einstein, black holes and gravitational waves. More than 100 years ago, Einstein predicted that space-time is dynamic, and gravitational waves travelling to the speed of light do exist. On September 2015, the two LIGO observatories in the USA detected for the first time a signal due to gravitational waves travelling through the Earth, produced 1,300 years ago as the result of the final embrace between two black holes after a long tango dancing. Since then, we have detected a few more signals, including one with artificial fireworks coming from the collision of neutron stars, leading to a better understanding of the origin of heavy (and precious) metals.

GÜNTHER HASINGER, Director of Science at the European Space Agency (ESA), delivered the lecture Discovering the Universe. In this lecture he reviewed the current and future ESA Scientific missions and addressed recent discoveries and some of the identified future science trends. The new possibilities of multimessenger astronomy, combining gravitational and electromagnetics observations; future enhanced X-ray and infrared telescopes; dedicated missions towards the understanding of the dark universe; and next decade exoplanet scientific planned missions were all addressed, with emphasis on the European planned contributions on these fields.

JOSÉ M. MARTÍNEZ-DUART, president of the Energy Specialized Group of the Royal Spanish Physics Society (RSEF), called for extending the life of nuclear power plants in order to avoid energy shortages in the Energy Transition process in Spain. In his lecture, he stressed that energy storage should at least double in the plan that the Spanish Government has sent to the EU institutions in order to make a broader use of renewable sources.

GABRIEL MARTÍNEZ-PINEDO, from the Technische Universität Darmstadt, gave the lecture Gold production in the Universe. For more than sixty years we have known that heavy elements such as gold and platinum are produced in the Universe through a sequence of nuclear reactions that include neutron captures and beta decays known as the r-process. The identification of the astrophysical place where this process occurs has only been possible recently thanks to the theoretical suggestion that the production of gold in the Universe is associated with an electromagnetic signal with a brightness equivalent to one thousand novas known as kilonova. This signal was first observed in August 2017.

MARY KATHARINA GAILLARD, from the University of California, offered in her lecture A Singularly Unfeminine Profession, the point of view of a woman dedicated to the research of Elementary Particles in the 60s and 70s in a very male-dominated field. Her tenacity, creativity and perseverance were an incentive for many other women who wanted to dedicate their efforts to the field of research.

DAVA SOBEL, scientific writer, delivered the lecture Women in Science: how the ladies of Harvard observatory took the measure of the stars. Some astronomers were surprised to learn that physicist Edward Pickering had been named director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1877. He certainly instituted changes, first by focusing on the physical properties of the stars, instead of their locations, and second by instituting a program of astrophotography that produced hundreds of thousands of glass-plate images of the night sky over the course of a century. Pickering also increased the observatory work force by hiring many women, several of whom became world famous in their own lifetimes for achievements such as creating a stellar classification system and discerning a means for measuring distances across space

JOSÉ BERNABÉU, Professor Emeritus at the University of Valencia, walked us through the life and work of Richard Feynman, without a doubt, he said, the most brilliant physicist of the second half of the 20th century. Feynman is credited with the pioneering concepts of Nanotechnology and Quantum Computing. His most famous contribution is the Feynman diagram, a graphical representation of a perturbative contribution in the quantum field theory.

SERIES OF CONFERENCES: 2019 - International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The International Year of the Periodic Table, officially declared by the UN, highlights both the tremendous intuition of the scientists who proposed it and the importance it has in order to explain and even predict the behavior of Matter in Nature. Eluvathingal Devassy Jemmis (Indian Institute of Science) delivered the lecture The Periodic Table of the Elements: Known, Unknown and the Novel - a personal selection. Miguel Ángel Alario (Complutense University of Madrid) gave the lecture “The first Spanish chemical element: A brief history of platinum”. In December, Miguel Ángel Alario gave a second conference entitled: The Periodic table: What it is and what it is good for?