Today and tomorrow Trento is hosting the usual Christmas meeting of the INFN FLAG iniziativa specifica, and on the occasion I will be giving a talk on “Five brief lessons on the Hubble tension” (whose slides you can find here). The meeting is typically held in Bologna just before Christmas, but this year it takes place in Trento under exceptional circumstances. Looking forward to seeing many familiar faces again (including our high-profile guest speaker and former Trento student Marco Peloso!), and to a nice dinner at Trattoria Piedicastello!
Corfu2023 Workshop on Tensions in Cosmology
Straight after the XXV SIGRAV conference, I am travelling to Corfu, Greece, to attend the Corfu2023 Workshop on Tensions in Cosmology. The workshop, as the name suggests, is focused on cosmological tensions, with special attention to the Hubble tension. I have been particularly looking forward to this workshop, firstly because it will be an occasion to catch up with some friends colleagues I haven’t seen in a long time (e.g. Vivian Poulin), and finally meet several people I’ve written many papers with (e.g. Eleonora Di Valentino) or frequently interacted with online (Leandros Perivolaropoulos, Jackson Levi Said, and Özgür Akarsu, to name but a few), but never actually met in person, but also because I’ve never been to Greece before. I will also be delivering a plenary talk on “Seven hints that early-time new physics alone is not sufficient to solve the Hubble tension” (whose slides you can find here), obviously focused on my “seven hints” paper. I look forward to lots of fruitful discussions, and interesting workshop, and a series of exciting social events (including a boat trip and a traditional Greek dinner)!
XXV SIGRAV conference
I’m really excited to be attending the XXV SIGRAV conference of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation in the beautiful city of Trieste! I will be picking up the 2023 SIGRAV Prize (see this earlier news item) and on the occasion I will also be delivering a plenary talk on “Searching for dark energy off the beaten track” (whose slides you can find here), presenting some of the ideas I’ve been developing over the past years. This is my second in-person conference after the pandemic, but the first which actually required travelling (the previous one took place in Trento). There are lots of people attending whose work I’ve been following for years, or whom I’m working together with or even wrote papers with, but never had the chance to meet in person (just to mention a few, Vitor Cardoso, Che-Yu Chen, Gaetano Lambiase, Gabriele Gionti, and Joe Silk), so I look forward to many interesting discussions!
Three recent talks
In the past three days I delivered three (online) seminars, all by the title of Seven hints that early-time new physics alone is not sufficient to solve the Hubble tension. I gave the talks “at” IPM, Tehran (Iran); the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science and Technology of Babes-Bolyai University (Romania), within Tiberiu Harko’s highly recommended seminar series in Gravitation, Cosmology, and Astrophysics; and at the conference Recent Advances in Mathematical Sciences and Interdisciplinary Areas 2023 at GLA University (India). I basically reported about a work in progress which I expect will be out in the next three months (so stay tuned!), and all the slides are available on my talks page. A pictorial summary of the work, made by my wife, is shown below.
UniVersum IV
Really excited to be attending UniVersum IV, the fourth edition of the UniVersum series of cosmology meetings, roughly the Italian equivalent of UKCosmo for the UK, or IberiCos for Spain-Portugal. This year’s edition is held, excitingly, in Trento! It also happens to be my first in-person conference after the pandemic. I will be giving a keynote talk on “Cosmic acceleration: now, then, and back then”, whose slides you can find here. Looking forward to lots of interesting discussions!