The planetarium talks is a series of talks, organized by MCI, Hochschule Flensburg and Phänomenta Flensburg, which highlights research in the border region Denmark/Germany. Sannino, who is professor both at SDU in Odense and at the University of Naples and has founded the "Centre of excellence for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology (CP3-Origins)", took more than 30 interested listeners through a tour-de-force under the half sphere of the Planetarium Glücksburg, which began with the big bang and ended with methods for reliably predicting pandemic behaviour.
According to Sannino we are at the dawn of a revolution in our understanding of what made the world, what keeps it together and what runs it. Scientists work at a general formalism to describe all four main forces in nature and it is in fact high energy particle physics that allows us to understand the initial, 'dark' age of the universe, while cosmology shines light on the following 'light' age. It is fascinating to observe that understanding the evolution of the universe helps us understanding the evolution of such disturbing phenomena as the Corona pandemic.
Leaving the planetarium, the audience definitely had a new view both on the universe and theoretical physics.