What an absolute privilege to stand face-to-face with true legends of physics this weekend! This past Sunday, during the special public session of the 24th Solvay Lectures at Flagey in Brussels, four of us from Helios astronomy club had the incredible opportunity to attend together—and I even managed to grab selfies with none other than Nobel laureates Kip Thorne and David Gross.
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| Walter, Pascal, Lieven, Fernando from Helios |
The event was entirely dedicated to gravitational waves and the deepest mysteries of our universe. Kip Thorne—who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for his decisive contributions to the LIGO detector project and the historic first-ever detection of gravitational waves—delivered a fascinating lecture titled "Probing Black Holes with Gravitational Waves". He brilliantly explained how these ripples in spacetime allow us to uncover the secrets of black holes. Alongside him, theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham took the stage to speak about testing the fundamental nature of gravity, after which David Gross expertly moderated the panel discussion that followed.
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| Kip Thorne |
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| Claudia De Rham |
Witnessing and meeting these brilliant minds becomes even more awe-inspiring when you realize the groundbreaking work they have accomplished. Kip Thorne earned his Nobel Prize for capturing the very first whispers of spacetime, proving Einstein’s century-old prediction about gravitational waves. David Gross, on the other hand, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics back in 2004—alongside Frank Wilczek and David Politzer—for the discovery of asymptotic freedom. Together, they unlocked how the strong nuclear force works and how quarks behave deep inside the smallest building blocks of atomic nuclei.
To cap off an already unforgettable day, we were treated to a lavish, grand reception after the presentations, giving our Helios group the perfect opportunity to raise a glass and process everything we had just experienced. From the subatomic particles that Gross unraveled to the colossal black holes that Thorne and De Rham brought to life, attending this Solvay Conference alongside fellow Helios members is a memory we will cherish for a very long time.
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| Selfie with Kip Thorne |
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| Selfie with David Gross |
