Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings. Volume 51

Transcription

1 Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings Volume 51

2 More information about this series at

3 Gabriele Gionti, S.J. Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya Eluo, S.J. Editors The Vatican Observatory, Castel Gandolfo: 80th Anniversary Celebration 123

4 Editors Gabriele Gionti, S.J. Vatican Observatory Rome Holy See (Vatican City State) Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya Eluo, S.J. Vatican Observatory Rome Holy See (Vatican City State) ISSN ISSN (electronic) Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings ISBN ISBN (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: Springer International Publishing AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

5 Foreword The history of the universe is made up of a web of stories. Some are cosmic or biological, and others are institutional and personal stories. All of this is the history of salvation that for us believers has Christ, the Crucified and Risen Lord, as the beginning and end of the entire universe. Within this Big History, the history of the Vatican Observatory is inscribed and made of the personal stories of its members. One morning, in one of our daily meetings dedicated to discuss the usual business of the Observatory, Fr. Jozef Maj, S.J., vice-director for administration, proposed to bring together all members of the staff, including those located at the headquarters of Castel Gandolfo and at the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson. His suggestion also included the adjunct scholars of the Observatory. I liked his proposal very much and decided to call for a symposium. It should be said that bringing together all the staff members and adjunct scholars was not an easy task; however, the occasion was worth the effort we made. And so, during the week of September 14 18, 2015, we celebrated the eightieth anniversary of the reestablishment of the Observatory at Castel Gandolfo by Pius XI, who also decreed that its management be entrusted to the Society of Jesus. On September 18, we concluded the celebration with the joy of being received by Pope Francis in private audience just on the eve of his trip to the USA. We appreciated very much the kindness and generosity of Pope Francis for receiving on such a busy day. This volume gathers the proceedings of the symposium by the staff members and adjunct scholars. It covers a variety of topics ranging across the different fields of research in astrophysics, as well as the history of Astronomy, interdisciplinary studies, and the challenges that the mission of the Observatory faces in the dialogue between science and faith. The Big History, as well as the history of the Vatican Observatory, has a promising future because it is filled with God s surprises. I wish the best to the current director, Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., and to the members of the Observatory. May they fulfill their mission with peace and joy. I conclude on a personal note. The papal audience was my last act of director. It was a wonderful way to end my nine years tenure. It was a privilege and an honor v

6 vi Foreword to serve the Holy See at the Vatican Observatory for 15 years. I take this opportunity to deeply thank Benedict XVI and Francis, who visited the Observatory showing their interest and support to the work of the Observatory. I am also very grateful to the Vatican authorities of the Governorate, the Secretariat of State and other Vatican offices with which I could collaborate, and to the Superiors of the Society of Jesus who supported my work and provided fine men to the staff of this research institute. I am profoundly grateful to the Jesuits and employees for their understanding and support. I am also thankful to the benefactors, friends, and collaborators who support the Observatory s mission in so many different ways. Córdoba, Argentina June 2017 José G. Funes, S.J. Former director of the Vatican Observatory

7 Address of His Holiness Pope Francis The Holy See To Participants in the Symposium Organized by the Vatican Observatory Hall of Popes Friday, September 18, 2015 Dear Brothers and Sisters, I welcome all of you who represent the working community of the Vatican Observatory, and I thank Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello for introducing our meeting. Deum Creatorem venite adoremus. With these words engraved on a marble plaque on the wall of one of the telescope domes at the Papal Residence in Castel Gandolfo, Pius XI began his discourse inaugurating the new Observatory on September 29, Indeed, rather than a scientific problem to be solved, the universe is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise (cf. Encyclical Laudato Si, n. 12). The entire material universe speaks of God s love, his boundless affection for us (ibid., n. 84). St Ignatius of Loyola truly understood this language. He vii

8 viii Address of His Holiness Pope Francis recounted that his greatest consolation was looking at the sky and the stars because this made him feel a tremendous desire to serve the Lord (Autobiography, 11). With the reestablishment of the Observatory at Castel Gandolfo, Pius XI also decreed that its management be entrusted to the Society of Jesus. Throughout these years, the Observatory astronomers have continued the paths of their research, creative paths, following in the footsteps of the Jesuit mathematicians and astronomers of the Collegio Romano, from Fr Christoph Clavius to Fr Angelo Secchi, to Fr Matteo Ricci, and so many others. On this anniversary, I am also pleased to recall the discourse that Benedict XVI addressed to the Fathers at the last General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, in which he stated that the Church has a pressing need of religious ready to dedicate their life to being on the very frontier between faith and human knowledge, faith and modern science. In these days, you, Fathers and Brothers, along with scholar associates, gathered to discuss your research and topics concerning the dialogue between science and religion. In this regard, St John Paul II stated: What is important is that the dialogue should continue and grow in depth and scope (Letter to Fr George V. Coyne, SJ, 1 June 1988). And he asked: Is the community of the world religions, including the Church, ready to enter into a more thoroughgoing dialogue with the scientific community, a dialogue in which the integrity of both religion and science is supported and the advance of each is fostered? (cf. ibid.). Within the context of interreligious dialogue, now more than ever, scientific research on the universe can offer a unique perspective, shared by believers and non-believers, which can help to achieve a deeper religious understanding of creation. In this sense, the Schools of Astrophysics, which the Observatory has organized in the last 30 years, present a valuable opportunity for young astrophysicists from around the world to dialogue and cooperate in the search for the truth. Additionally during your conference, you also discussed the importance of communicating that the Church and her Pastors foster, encourage, and promote authentic science, as Leo XIII emphasized (cf. Motu Proprio Ut Mysticam). It is very important that you share with people the gift of your scientific knowledge of the universe, freely giving what you have freely received. In the spirit of gratitude to the Lord for the witness of science and faith that the members of the Observatory have borne in these decades, I would like to encourage you to continue the journey with your colleagues and with those who share the enthusiasm and toil of the exploration of the universe. It is a journey that you also take in the company of the Observatory staff, of benefactors and friends, and of so many people of good will. Yes, we are all on a journey to the common house of heaven, where we will be able to read with admiration and happiness the mystery of the universe (cf. Encyclical Laudato Si, n. 243). May Almighty God, who sustains in existence the whole universe, through the intercession of the Virgin Mother, fill you with his peace and bless you. Vatican City, Vatican City State Pope Francis

9 Contents Part I Planetary Science 108 Years of Meteorites at the Vatican Observatory... 3 Robert J. Macke Near Earth Objects and Their Physical Characterization Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya Eluo, S.J. Part II Stellar Evolution and Stars The Enigmatic Lambda Boötis Stars Christopher J. Corbally, S.J. Mapping the Milky Way in the Near-IR: The Future of the VVV Survey Dante Minniti Some Recent Investigations in Stellar Evolution at the Specola Vaticana David Brown The Vilnius Photometric System Studying Stars and Interstellar Matter at the Vatican Observatory Richard P. Boyle, S.J. and Robert Janusz, S.J. Part III Galaxies Clusters of Galaxies and Some Jellyfishes in the Sky Alessandro Omizzolo Stellar Haloes of Galaxies Richard D Souza ix

10 x Contents Part IV Cosmology Aspects of Duality in Cosmology Gabriele Gionti, S.J. Creation of Matter in a Noncommutative Universe Tomasz Miller and Michael Heller Testing New Physics with Polarized Light: Cosmological Birefringence Matteo Galaverni Part V History of Astronomy, Education and Outreach Showing the World: How Vatican Astronomers Interact with the Popular Press Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. The Rome Historical Cauchoix Telescope Recovered Aldo Altamore, Francesco Poppi and Tommaso Bosco The Vatican Meeting on Stellar Populations José G. Funes, S.J. The Leap Second Debate and the Lessons from Timekeeping History Paul Gabor Practicing Science and Faith: A Short History of the Vatican Observatory Ileana Chinnici Part VI Science-Philosophy-Theology Some Reflections on the Influence and Role of Scientific Thought in the Context of the New Evangelization G. Tanzella-Nitti The Philosophy of Expertise: The Case of Vatican Astronomers Louis Caruana, S.J. Towards Furnishing the Universe Paul Mueller, S.J. Conclusions

11 Introduction On September 29, 1935, Pope Pius XI officially inaugurated the new headquarters of the Specola Vaticana in the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo. With new telescopes, a new spectra laboratory, and a young staff of Jesuit scientists, this inauguration marked the beginning of an intense period of scientific achievement at the Vatican Observatory. From September 14 to 18, 2015, eighty years later, the current members of the Vatican Observatory and its adjunct scholars participated in an internal symposium to celebrate the anniversary of this move from Vatican City to Castel Gandolfo. This was also an occasion to celebrate the new headquarters of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo; in 2009, the Vatican Observatory headquarters moved from the Papal Palace to the buildings that once belonged to the convent of a community of Basilian nuns, expelled from White Russia, and given asylum in the Vatican under direct protection of Pius IX. The roots of the Vatican Observatory date back to the reform of the Calendar, 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII promoted the reform of the Julian Calendar into a new and more precise version, called the Gregorian Calendar, which is, in fact, the one that we all use and can find hanging in our houses and offices today, particularly in the Western world. One of the main reasons for this change was a new determination of the date of Easter and other religious feasts. The new calendar was the result of a study commissioned to a group of scientists that included the Jesuit father Cristopher Clavius, S.J., who wrote a book on the new Gregorian calendar for the purpose of spreading its use. This reform involved a series of astronomical observations that were demonstrated in the Tower of Winds in Vatican City, considered by some to be the first Vatican Observatory. Pope Leo XIII in the Motu Proprio Ut Mysticam (1891), the foundation act of the Vatican Observatory, explicitly referred to it as the first Vatican Observatory, where Fr. Ignazio Danti, O.P. (Dominican), built a meridian line. Traces of a Vatican Observatory continued to xi

12 xii Introduction exist in Vatican City. A new Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory) was opened in the Tower of Winds by Mons. Filippo Luigi Gilii in 1789 and lasted until The legacy of the Vatican Observatory also includes the Pontifical Observatory of the Roman College, located on the roof of Saint Ignatius Church in Rome. Here, the most important figure was Fr. Angelo Secchi, S.J., who is considered to be the father of modern astrophysics; he was the first person to propose a star classification based on the stars spectra. After the fall of the Pontifical States in 1870, following the entrance of the Italian troops and the relocation of the capitol of the newly formed Italian state to Rome, the Holy See lost all of its Observatories (though Fr. Secchi was allowed to continue his work at Saint Ignatius until his death in 1878). Therefore, under the suggestion of Fr. Francesco Denza, a Barnabite father who was a student of Fr. Secchi, Pope Leo XIII refounded the Vatican Observatory in Vatican City in the Tower of the Winds and appointed Fr. Denza as director. From its beginnings, the newly refounded Vatican Observatory was involved in very important projects, most famously the Observatory s participation alongside many other national observatories in the Carte du Ciel project, the first photographic mapping of the sky; the Vatican Observatory obtained a special Carte du Ciel telescope for this purpose. Succeeding Denza, the newly appointed director, Fr. Rodriguez, was a meteorologist, not an astronomer; questions raised by his leadership forced his rapid replacement. Pius X instituted a committee headed by Card. Pietro Maffi to find a new director. Fr. Hagen, S.J., director of the Observatory of the Jesuit University of Georgetown, was then appointed the new director of the Vatican Observatory in Since then, the Vatican Observatory has been entrusted to the Society of Jesus, with a community of Jesuits established to staff the Observatory, in both scientific and administrative capacities, on the model of the magazine La Civiltà Cattolica. Eventually, light pollution, caused by the increasing number of artificial lights in Rome, ruined any chance of observing the sky in the city. Therefore, as already mentioned, the headquarters of the Vatican Observatory moved from Vatican City to Castel Gandolfo in 1935, along with an augmented staff of young scientists, leading to a robust increase in the Specola s scientific activities. But the problem of light pollution never really stopped, and even though a one-meter Schmidt telescope was donated by Pius XII to the Specola, in the 1980s, the skies above Castel Gandolfo were already so light-polluted as to hamper any kind of scientific observation. A further migration was necessary. Many proposals were examined; finally, Fr. George Coyne, S.J., who had been appointed director in 1978, established a new branch of the Vatican Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. The offices of the astronomers of the Vatican Observatory were located in the Astronomy Department of the University of Arizona, The Steward Observatory, thus enabling

13 Introduction xiii them to use the telescopes and other facilities of the university. A few years after their arrival in Tucson, the Vatican Observatory accepted an offer to build a new telescope along with the Steward Observatory on the top of a 3000-m mountain, Mt. Graham. The research carried out at the Vatican Observatory covers a broader range than that started 80 years earlier in Castel Gandolfo. This is in part due to the different fields of expertise of the current staff members, but it also reflects the different research interests in astronomy today. For example, the papers presented in these proceedings highlight a conspicuous group of people, quite numerous given the size of the Vatican Observatory, doing research in Planetology. The paper on the meteorite collection of the Vatican Observatory presents a history of the collection and describes the actual research on meteorites: measurements of heat capacity, porosity, and other physical properties. Near-Earth Object (NEO) is also an active field of study. Here, more than a mere astrometrical study of meteors, the main focus is the study of the physical properties of the NEO through spectroscopic analysis of the light that comes from them. An equally active field of research at the Vatican Observatory is stars and stellar evolution. One field of research is the k-bootis stars, which appear to be quite enigmatic for their classification based on spectroscopic methods. The relative abundance of their metallic elements especially poses some serious questions not yet resolved. Researches in this direction might give interesting information about the structure and evolution of certain stars in our Milky Way, as well as improving the models we use to describe the evolution of stars. The VVV (Vista Variable in the Via Lactea) survey is instead a different kind of research, which aims to map the bulge of our Galaxy through the 4-m Vista telescope of the European Southern Telescope (ESO). The aim of this research is to get not only a better picture of the bulge of our Galaxy but also a better picture of its interior part. Of course, in this way, it is also possible to improve the knowledge one has of our Galaxy. An interesting field of research is also being performed in the field of stellar evolution. Here, the field had a milestone in the joint Vatican Observatory Pontifical Academy of Science conference on Stellar Population in Researches in this direction are being continued in the study of stellar evolution. In particular, through numerical simulations, the metallicity of host subdwarf stars is being studied, since this can shed light on the general picture of star evolution. Another quite established line of research at the Vatican Observatory is the use of the Vilnius photometric system. It is a medium-band seven-color photometric system, created in 1963 for the classification of stars. Originally, it was applied to photographic plates, but lately, it has also been used for CCD cameras. The study of Galaxies has been an important topic of research at the Vatican Observatory over the last twenty years. A promising line of research is the study performed by the Wide Field Nearby Galaxy Survey (WINGS) group. This study helps in understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies. Jellyfish Galaxies

14 xiv Introduction are also studied. They have been stripped of their gas and have a tentacle of debris, which is the main reason for their name. Their study is useful for understanding Galaxy formation and evolution, as well as the formation and evolution of stars. The study of Galaxy halos has been another interesting topic of discussion at the meeting. Galaxy halos are particularly useful for detecting dark matter. In fact, these are the classical regions in which dark matter is generally located. Cosmology has been another subject of discussion at this conference. There has been interesting talk about non-commutative geometry, in which the topic of dark matter and dark energy has been tackled. It has been shown that, using techniques of non-commutative geometry, it is possible to derive a version of the Einstein's Equations with additional terms that can be added to the energy momentum tensor and can then be interpreted as additional matter. Another topic treated has been the study of CMB radiation. The Standard Cosmological Model (usually called KCDM, in which K means the cosmological constant and then the presence of dark energy, and CDM stands for cold dark matter) can be extended with additional terms. Adding these terms into the theory, the possible effects that they have on CMB radiation can be calculated, and then, it could be possible, in principle, to check directly whether this modification of the Standard Cosmological Model really does exist. A final cosmological paper discussed at the conference has been on the issue of dualities in cosmology. It has been presented that in alternative theories of gravity (also called F(R) theories of gravity), the FLRW (Friedmann, Lemaitre, Robertson, Walker) homogeneous and isotropic metric, which is the solution of the Standard Model in Cosmology, is also the solution of a general extended theory of gravity. The cosmological model exhibits further symmetries, which are duality transformations. A section of the meeting has been dedicated to the history of Astronomy. There has been a presentation on the history of the Vatican Observatory, the content of which was already mentioned in the first part of this introduction. A second paper has been on the recent finding of quite an old telescope lens stored in Monte Mario. This telescope, the Cauchoix, has important historical relevance, since it was bought by the Astronomical Observatory of the Roman College and was used by Fr. Angelo Secchi, S.J., for the first stellar classification based on light spectra. A final section of the conference has been focused on the dialogue among science, theology, and philosophy. In a theology paper, the issue of scientism has been discussed very carefully, highlighting that the usual clichè on the dominance of scientific culture in modern society should be carefully rethought. Some suggestions are given to believer scientists in order to promote a new evangelization. In a philosophy paper, it has been discussed what a philosophical discussion is, and how hard it is nowadays to carry on such a discussion on topics concerning cutting-edge research in the natural sciences. It is analyzed that these disciplines

15 Introduction xv also have to appeal to an authority, when the validity of a scientific theory needs to be accepted. Progress in philosophical reflections on the natural sciences is envisaged in interdisciplinary analysis, and the Vatican Astronomers, because of their education, are seen as having the skills to perform them. A final paper in the conference has dealt with the topic of scientific theory being theory-laden. Some philosophers of science have pointed out that the majority of scientific observations are influenced by the cultural environment in which they are made. Scientists seem to observe nature through eyes that are influenced by the same theory they are trying to build. This, fostered to extreme consequences, appears to create a strong dependence for the natural sciences on the social context, weakening the presumption of objectivity that is usually attached to scientific investigations. The Astronomers of the Vatican Observatory, under the force of their training in both the humanities and spirituality, are seen as people who are key to seeing these aspects of natural sciences and reflecting on them critically. They could go a long way towards regaining the credibility of science, which has been lost in this time of postmodernism. This work is dedicated to the loving memories of Bill Stoeger, S.J. and Luiji Lozi. Participants of the 80th anniversary celebration with Pope Francis on September 18th, 2015

16 xvi Introduction Pictures courtesy of the mail post office of the Vatican City State