Flemish cosmologist and professor of theoretical physics at the Catholic University of Leuven Thomas Hertog is today – Sunday 23 July 2023 – the first guest of VPRO Zomergasten 2023. This year’s presenter of this summer classic, Theo Maassen, gave an interview about his perfect TV evening. Find out all about Thomas Hertog at Zomergasten 2023 here.
Thomas Hertog and Theo Maassen
Theo Maas*About Thomas Hertog: “I’ve always liked movies set in space: Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, Interstellar. Nice stories but made up. Now I have the opportunity to talk to someone who really knows what’s going on in the universe. Space, gravity, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, extraterrestrial life, black holes. I want to understand. I want to know.”
Fleming Thomas Hertog in Zomergasten 2023
Thomas Duke* About Zomergasten: “On this summer’s evening, we look broadly into the future, to possible extraterrestrial life forms and the entry of artificial intelligence into science. We enter the magical open space where science and art meet, groping for that mysterious ‘mystery’ from which they both emerge. I hope to let the viewer experience what science today teaches us about the place of our humans in this enormous universe.”
Thomas Duke
Thomas Hertog is a cosmologist and professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven. He is considered one of the most important cosmologists of our time. For twenty years, he and teacher and close friend Stephen Hawking have been exploring the origins of the universe. Thomas Hertog obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge and then worked at the University of California and at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. He is married to engineer Natalie Boss. Together they have four children. They live with four other families on a goat farm in Bosval in Walloon Brabant.
The rise of time
He recently wrote a file The worldwide bestseller The Origin of Time*, developing their latest ideas and offering a revolutionary view of man and the universe. One in which it appears that perhaps time is an illusion and that immutable laws of nature do not exist. The book has been translated into 27 languages.
Quantum cosmology
Thomas Hertog works in the fascinating field of quantum cosmology: the branch of theoretical physics that deals with the first phase of the universe, asking how it all began. A question that Albert Einstein did not know how to answer. As he put it, the main motive of his work is “the mystery of the universe, the wonders of the universe.”
Stephen Hawking
Thomas Hertog, like his mentor, the world-famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, loves to take to the stage to convey this amazement to the general public. In the Netherlands he presented his book at Paradiso, did a musical program on the cosmos with the Brussels Philharmonic and presented a theater show in New York on artificial intelligence and aliens. His talent for making complex material accessible has been noted in the media, and he has appeared on many talk shows and television shows.
Thomas Hertog and Stephen Hawking
Mathematics was Thomas Hertog’s first love. It was in him, he says, that he was playing with numbers as a kid. And that while his parents, both linguists, were “completely illiterate in mathematics”. Although it’s become a physics study at KU Leuven, Thomas Hertog still heads to Cambridge for his 150-year-old master’s degree in “Mathematics Courses Part III,” a highly advanced mathematics course. As the best student in his class, he qualified as a Ph.D. candidate Stephen Hawking*. The two found each other in their scientific, philosophical approach to the universe, in their thinking about God and aliens, and in their concerns about artificial intelligence and the future of the human race.
He traveled to Iran and Afghanistan
Thomas Hertog loves to travel, preferably to the Middle East. His travels to Iran and Afghanistan opened his eyes to a different Sufi approach to reality. Prove to him that science is more than the West’s tendency to objectivity and determinism. Develop an open mind that sets him apart as a scientist.
VPRO Summer Guests 2023
VPRO Zomergasten is a three-hour live interview program based on. The idea was conceived in 1988. Famous guests from culture, science and business are invited to organize their favorite TV evening on the basis of TV and movie clips and explain their choice in a good conversation. This year it will be presented by Theo Maassen.
Watch VPRO Zomergasten 2023
VPRO Zomergasten 2023 can be watched from Sunday 23 July at 8.15pm on VPRO on NPO2. Short introductions for 2020 and 2021 Summer Guests can also be viewed via NPO Start and NPO Plus. If you want to do this from the outside, make sure you have one VPN connectiondeveloped in the Netherlands.
Photo: VPRO – Reinier van Brummelen
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23 July 2023 /
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