The word “light” contains many meanings that take shape and substance depending on the context in which it is placed. But starting from the definition given to it in physics – that is, an electromagnetic wave that spreads through rays that can be reduced to straight lines. The most important light source is the sun, where nuclear reactions take place – a series of events that celebrate it start from May 16th in Como and not by chance in the city that gave birth to the chemist and physicist Alessandro Volta.
The first datewhich begins and ends on Thursday 16 May and is organized on the same day as the International Day of Light, is entitled “Technology and Art to discover the beauty that exists in the world” (4pm, room 2.12 of theUniversity of Insubria in via Valleggio 11 in Como). The event is made up of two moments. The first “Here comes the sun – The reconstruction of light reveals the connection between art and experience” held by Professor Paolo Di Trapani of the University of Insubria while the second is entitled “Artistic diagnostics – Physical technologies for the valorisation of works of art ‘art” and will be held by Dr. Katerina Jirakova of Palacky University of Olomouc in the Czech Republic.
The Festival of Light in Como – Junior Ferreira/Unsplash
And from tomorrow 16 May, until the 30th, the 11th edition of the Lake Como 2024 Light Festival begins in Como, entitled for this year “Light and time: science, philosophy and art” (https://fondazionealessandrovolta.it/festival-della-luce-lake-como/). It is a scientific journey, with philosophical and theological traits, which aims to define a meeting point between light and time. This eleventh edition of the Festival is, as always, organized by the Alessandro Volta Foundation and will be divided into six events. For the organizers, “Light, with its central role in modern physics, represents a fascinating reality, at the limits of human intuition, which escapes us and always questions us about its own nature and that of the universe”. The underlying theme of this XI edition of the Festival is space-time, the universe in which we are immersed and on which generations of scientists have produced great theories and interpretative models, starting from Greek science and the modern science of Galileo, Newton, Einstein , up to the current models of unification of natural laws. Light and time have also returned to the fore thanks to the awarding of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to three scientists for their experimental methods in demonstrating the physics of “attoseconds” (intervals lasting one trillionth of a second) in optical pulses, a field that could revolutionize our understanding of time and matter.
