Physicists, cosmologists meet at Vatican to discuss nature of universe

(November 03, 2011) World-renown physicists, who study everything from imperceptible particles to the expanding cosmos, came together for a Vatican-sponsored conference on the "new frontier of physics" -- the sub-nuclear world of electrons, hadrons and neutrinos. From the ancient Greeks to the Nobel Prize-winning scientists of today, humanity has sought to delve into the nature and origin of matter and discover the basic building blocks of the universe. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences provided a forum for about 52 experts to showcase the latest discoveries when it hosted an international symposium October 30 to November 2 on the future of sub-nuclear physics and the puzzles left to piece together. Lucio Rossi, a physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research laboratory in Geneva, said that with every new discovery, science learns that "what we know is still not perfect" and may never be. "People really think that science can give the truth. But science doesn't give truth with a capital 'T.' Science gives some piece of truth," but is never definitive, he said. Knowledge and certainty are like a path where you arrive slowly toward something, toward our destiny, toward global truth, the final truth, he added. But "science indicates that this path is really kind of infinite here in the finite world" because as soon as someone discovers the answer to one question, it opens up a whole new set of questions, he said. "The more we know, the more we are conscious of our ignorance," said Rossi.