Quantum Gravity and the Big Bang: Singularities, Bounces, and Spacetime Emergence

• Alvaro Mozota Frauca (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

Epistemology of spacetime topology

• Marta Bielinska (The Centre for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh)

Causality, Chance and Cosmology

• Sulona Kandhai (University of Szczecin)

Predictions in an Uncertain World

• Antonios Papaioannou (University of Rennes)

What differentiates astrophysical experiments?

• Rami Jreige (University of Bristol)

Quantum Information in Cosmology

• Achim Kempf (University of Waterloo)
• Charis Anastopoulos (University of Patras)
• Maria Eftychia Papageorgiou

Keynote Speach - Title: TBA

• Emmanuel Saridakis (National Observatory of Athens)

ESRO, Space-based Research, and Fundamental Physics.

• ALESSIO ROCCI (Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Solvay Institutes)

The Epistemic Productivity of Erroneous Reanalyses in Black Hole Imaging

• Paula Muhr (paula.muhr@brand-university.de)

Black Holes or Neutron Stars? The Implicit Bets Behind the First Detection of Gravitational Waves

• Jean-Philippe Martinez (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute))

The Secret Lives of Mass Gap Black Holes

• Jamee Elder (Tufts University)

Physicality Behind Black Hole Universality

• Yichen Luo (Nanyang Technological University and Rotman Institute of Philosophy)

Why care about going beyond Kerr?

• Juliusz Doboszewski (Jagiellonian University & Black Hole Initiative, Harvard)

Signature Change and Kretschmann Invariance: Atemporality and Empirical Constraints in Black Hole Shadows

• Silvia De Bianchi (University of Milan)
• Salvatore Capozziello (University of Naples Federico II)
• Emmanuele Battista (INFN Frascati)

Nature of contemporary Astronomy and Astrophysics: portrait of unique sciences

• Charly Mobers (UNamur, KU Leuven, Royal Observatory of Belgium)

From Saving the Phenomena to Phenomenological Modelling: A Genealogy of Cosmological Phenomenology

• Julien Bernard (Centre Gilles Gaston Granger UMR7304 CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université)

Dark Matter and Scientific Realism: An Extensional Approach Among Realist Frameworks

• Evangelos Georgoudis (University of Amsterdam)

Realism in the Shadows; Philosophical Reflections on Universe’s Dark Sector

• Nikolaos Alexiou (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens)

Is dark matter the ether of the 21st century?

• Antonis Antoniou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)

From Causal Boundary to Epistemic Interface: The Conceptual Transformation of Horizons in Modern Cosmology

• Susanna Piombo

Four flatness problems in cosmology

• Phillip Helbig

Whence the Desire to Close the Universe?

• Jonathan Fay (University of Bristol)

Are Wormholes Physically Unreasonable?

• Sanne Vergouwen (Utrecht University)

Ontological aspects of gravity from the geometrical trinity

• Charalampos Tzerefos (National Observatory of Athens)
• Fotios Anagnostopoulos (University of Peloponnese)

Cosmological Methodology in the Face of Tensions [Keynote speaker]

• Helen Meskhidze (University of Cincinnati)

It is often argued that anomalies and tensions in current theories reveal where they might be lacking and "hint at" future theories. While this may hold true for some historical cases, I argue that the current "precision tension era” (Di Valentino, Said, and Saridakis, 2025) in cosmology—typified by the Hubble and S8 tensions—has a different character. These tensions indicate that ΛCDM is lacking, but do not provide guidance for where the problem lies or criteria for evaluating the pursuit-worthiness of alternative theoretical proposals. The result is a clear mapping of the possibility space by theorists and a huge proliferation of viable theoretical proposals but no consensus on any particular proposal. Given that tensions are not providing the theoretical guidance often expected in such situations, a natural response might be to adopt an eliminative strategy wherein proposals are evaluated by their ability to resolve the tension and eliminated if they cannot. Comparative approaches, such as the "H0 Olympics" pursued by Schöneberg et al. (2022), exemplify this tendency to evaluate models individually. While initially appealing, I argue that this approach assumes a stability and modularity to the tensions that they do not actually exhibit. Instead, I advocate for a compositional approach wherein proposals are assessed by their contributions to alleviating the tension and their compatibility with other proposals. Such an approach pushes cosmologists to consider how proposals might jointly work to resolve tensions and may, counterintuitively, favor more flexible approaches that are sometimes dismissed as ad hoc.

Effective Realism and the Problem of Boltzmann Brains

• Marco Maggiani (University of Pittsburgh)

The Antinomies of Modern Cosmology: AI, Epistemic Limits, and the Kantian Horizon

• Marius Augustin Draghici (Institute of Philosophy and Psychology of the Romanian Academy)

From Cosmic Dipoles to the Cosmological Principle

• Kartik Tiwari (University of Bonn)

Can we test the Copernican Principle?

• George Papadopoulos (History and Philosophy of Science and Technology)

Toward a Foundation for Cosmo/Astrostatistics: Deidealization from Structure Formation to the Cosmos

• Tianzhe Cozette Shen (University of Arizona)

Experiments, models, and unification, or why gravitational waves are not ripples of spacetime

• Antonio Ferreiro

Can the Constants Vary? Some Metaphysical and Cosmological Considerations

• Mahmoud Jalloh

The Nomic Status of the Fundamental Constants of Nature: The Case of the Cosmological Constant

• Niels Martens (Utrecht University)

The fundamental constants at the heart of measurement and cosmology [Keynote speaker]

• Jean-Philippe Uzan (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

On 16 November 2018, the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures adopted the new International System of Units (SI). The new definition of the base units, including the kilogram, is based on a choice of universal constants. This is the culmination of a long process that began on 26 March 1791. This presentation will review this scientific and historical adventure, the importance of units and their definitions and the choice of defining them on the basis of natural constants. This will require us to look again at the role of constants in the laws of nature: What is a constant? How can we be sure that they remain constant? What are their links with the units and tests of general relativity? These topical questions will prompt us to consider some recent advances in theoretical physics, as well as the history of the evolution of scientific ideas over more than two centuries... and open an unexpected new window on the search for dark matter and dark energy or any new physical degree of freedom, a key issue in modern cosmology!