Freitag, 28. April 2023 · 20:00 · English lecture Radio Kosmos / Listening to the Universe

The Quantum Universe – On the occasion of Arno Penzias‘ 90th birthday

Radio Kosmos / Listening to the Cosmos

The Quantum Universe

On the occasion of Arno Penzias‘ 90th birthday

Lecture in English by
Prof. Dr. Viatcheslav Mukhanov (Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, LMU München) – Max Planck Medal 2015

Friday, 28 April 2023, 8 p.m.
Venue: Volkssternwarte München, Rosenheimer Str. 145h

„I will talk about how the precision measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1964 allowed us to prove the quantum origin of galaxies and their clusters.“ – V. Mukhanov

Get your ticket!

The lecturer

Prof. Dr. Mukhanov holds the chair on cosmology at the Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics at LMU Munich (since 1997) and was awarded the Max Planck Medal in 2015 (among many more international awards). He is one of the pioneering minds – if not the pioneer – behind the linking of the grand scale structure of the universe, with its galaxies and galaxy clusters, with the quantum world. As early as in 1980/1981 he had made predictions on the influence of quantum fluctuations that were confirmed in the following decades by the COBE, WMAP and Planck probes, analyzing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in more and more detail.

It was Arno Penzias (born on 26 April 1933 in Munich) and Robert Wilson who first discovered the CMB, the „echo of the Big Bang“, in 1964, and received the Nobel prize in 1978. Jewish born Penzias was forced to emigrate from Nazi Germany as a child in 1939 and fled to London with a Kindertransport.

We celebrate Penzias‘ 90th birthday with a mini lecture series „Radio Kosmos / Listening to the Universe“ in April and May 2023, comprising two other lectures: On the Nuremberg „Arno-Penzias-Radioteleskop“ (April 21st) and on „Musik & Kosmos“ (May 5th, one night before the Lange Nacht der Musik in Munich).

Prof. Mukhanov was awarded numerous internationally highly renowned honours, including (selection):

Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1988.
Oskar Klein Medal, Stockholm University, 2006
Gruber Prize in Cosmology, 2013
Schelling-Preis of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2014
Max-Planck-Medal in 2015 by the DPG
Dirac Medal in 2019 by the ICTP

It starts with a bang!

Radio Kosmos / Listening to the Universe

Dreiteilige Vortragsserie zu Ehren von Arno Penzias‘ 90. Geburtstag am 26. April (geb. 1933 in München, gerettet 1939 mit einem Kindertransport nach England).
1964: Entdeckung der Kosmischen Hintergrundstrahlung, das „Echo des Urknalls“ mit der Holmdel Horn Antenne, zusammen mit Robert Wilson
1978: Nobelpreis für Physik, zusammen mit R. Wilson

26.04.2019: Einweihung des Arno-Penzias-Radioteleskops in Nürnberg

April / Mai 2023: dreiteilige Vortragsserie an der Volkssternwarte: „Radio Kosmos / Listening to the Universe“

21.04.2023: Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Thomas Lauterbach (AGN) an der Volkssternwarte München mit Live-Radiobeobachtung, zugleich Einführung in die Radioastronomie allgemein (s. diese Seite)
28.04.2023: Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Viatcheslav Mukhanov (LMU): „The Quantum Universe“ (in English)
05.05.2023: Vortrag von Sebastian Deiries (VSW) über „Musik und Kosmos“ – anlässlich der Langen Nacht der Musik am 06. Mai

⇒ Mehr Infos zur Vortragsreihe gibt es hier.

Online ticket booking

Tickets €8/5
Members free

Advance booking recommended due to the limited number of seats.

Admission from 7:30 p.m.

If the skies are clear, guests are invited to visit our rooftop observatory after the talk and enjoy the views.