#Interstellar #Voyages and #Extraterrestrial #Civilizations at the #Festival della #Scienza in #Genova

Interstellar Voyages and Extraterrestrial Civilizations at the "Festival della Scienza" in Genova
Alberto Vecchiato

Yesterday I had an exciting and interesting experience. I made a lecture at the Science festival of Genova, Italy. This was just one of the tens or even hundreds of possibilities you can enjoy at this 11-days long (from 10/26 to 11/5) science event for the large public, which includes lectures, performances, laboratories, and exhibitions.

Since 2003, every year, an association of enthusiasts and skilled professionals organizes this event in collaboration with several research institutes, universities and experts in science popularization, and my personal impression is that they're doing very well, judging from the excited reception I felt in the city. 

For example, I could immediately notice how the registration area at the historical "Palazzo Ducale" and the exhibits surrounding its premises were filled with participants, including lots of flying children.

My lecture was in the auditorium of Galata Museo del Mare, a great museum of the sea facing the harbor of this beautiful town, and I was glad to see that the public quickly filled the 110 seats in the hall. Actually, since I am certainly not a celebrity, this result is probably due to the previously mentioned enthusiasm for the event, but also because of the subject of the speech, which could easily fire up the fantasy of science fiction fans. The theme of this year was "contacts", and as an astrophysicist, relativist, and SciFi addict, I could miss this chance to speak about space exploration and contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations!

This subject gave also the perfect chance to dress in a more catching fashion "boring" and "serious" scientific concepts like the conservation of the momentum, or the constancy of the speed of light, or "esoteric" and "intimidating" like the Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Inflation or the expansion of the universe. A little trick that makes much easier to share them with the large public, which eventually made several interesting questions.

As I mentioned before, this experience was very enriching and enjoyable, also because I could know many nice persons, like the great Giorgio Dendi, a brilliant hobbyist mathematician, trainer of the young participants of the Italian Mathematical Olympiad, who prepared the anagram of my name in the picture below inspired to the theme of the lecture. ("C'è vita? C'è altro? Boh!" that in Italian means "Is there life? Is there anything else? Dunno.")

And speaking of mathematics, it was a pleasure for me to meet a group of nice undergraduate students of this discipline from the University of Turin (Italy) who want to become professional science communicators.

My best wishes to them!