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Antonino Zichichi

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Zichichi in 2006

Antonino Zichichi (15 October 1929 – 9 February 2026) was an Italian physicist who has worked in the field of nuclear physics. He served as President of the World Federation of Scientists, President of the European Physical Society for over 10 years, and as a professor at the University of Bologna.

Quotes

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  • Golden beauty is not just art. It is pure geometry. It is visual physics. It is found in the regular pentagon, where the ratio of the side of the inscribed star to the side of the pentagon is exactly 62% and 38%: the two segments of a line divided according to the golden section.
  • Science and faith are not in conflict; they are expressions of the two components of which we are made: the transcendent and the immanent.
These two cannot be in conflict for the very simple reason that Science was born in the heart of Catholic Culture. And it was born inasmuch as a believer sought in the "stones" the "imprints of the Creator." Galileo Galilei called the Fundamental Laws of Nature this.
He might have found that the "footprints" did not exist, but that there was only and only chaos. Even today there are those who claim that we would be children of chaos, thus denying the existence of a Fundamental Logic that governs the world.
The existence of this Logic is the message that comes from Science after 400 years of experimental research characterized by discoveries that no one had been able to imagine.
These discoveries are proof that the Author of the Fundamental Laws is more intelligent than all of us and that they are not children of chaos but of a Rigorous Logic.
If there is a Logic there must be the Author of the Logic. John Paul II gave the correct definition to enshrine the alliance between Science and Faith "Science and Faith are both gifts of God....
  • As a believing scientist [...] it is my deep conviction that it is our task to search nature and the universe, as Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science, did, for the footprints of God.
  • If I deny the existence of the transcendental sphere, then everything is exhausted in the immanent and the most rigorous component of logic, thus the mathematical structure, should prove the theorem of the denial of God [...]. Why can science never discover God? Because, if science discovered God, God would be the greatest discovery of all time, but it would not be God, because God is everything; science can only discover the fundamental components of immanent reality. [...] Since science discovers that there is a rigorous logic that governs the world from its smallest structures, such as the structure of the proton [...], at the boundaries of the cosmos, if there is a rigorous logic, it is legitimate to ask, "Will there be an author of this logic?".
  • Certainly heaven is something we all need, however, we should not imagine it anthropomorphically. [...] I believe that we certainly cannot rule out the possibility of an existence outside of space and time, mass, energies and charges. In heaven there can be anything but that.
  • Over the course of ten thousand years, from the dawn of civilization to the 16th century, all cultures had deluded themselves into thinking they knew how to decipher the Book of Nature without ever posing a single question to Its Author. That is why no culture had been given the privilege of discovering a fundamental Law of Nature.
To make a scientific discovery, therefore, it is necessary to surrender to the intellectual superiority of the Creator of all things visible and invisible, and to carry out an experiment.
    • Antonino Zichichi: l'alleanza tra fede e scienza è possibile. From an interview of Paolo Centofanti, Zenit (January 30, 2008)
  • The theory of evolution by Darwin does not explain how this transition occurred, from inert matter to living matter and then to the only form of living matter endowed with reason, which is man. It is not scientifically rigorous. A rigorous scientific theory meets the requirements of scientific rigor of Galileo, who was the father of science: mathematical description and experimental reproducibility. Requirements that evolutionary theory does not meet, precisely because it cannot describe nor even less reproduce the transition from nonliving matter to living species, plant and animal. It cannot answer the question of why among millions of species, only one, the human being, is endowed with reason. The science of life has not figured out how life arises; it is not an exact science.
  • Biological evolutionism claims to be considered a science. However, we must ask: What is the hard evidence that supports it? In laboratories around the world, some even secret, attempts are being made to answer fundamental questions such as the transition from inert matter to living matter, but definitive answers still do not exist.Evolutionism tells us about processes that take millions of years, but without a rigorous mathematical basis or reproducible experiments, we cannot consider it a Galilean science. True scientific rigor requires tangible evidence, not just words. It is crucial for human progress to distinguish between what is science and what is unproven theory.
  • Official Facebook profile (in Italian; September 13, 2024)
  • Man is not just another animal. Our species possesses something unique, a privilege that distinguishes us from all other life forms: Reason.

It is so because of Reason that we have been able to make extraordinary discoveries, such as mathematics and rigorous logic, which have enabled us to understand the universe and our place in it.Evolutionists tell us that we are just another animal species, but they forget that we are the only ones capable of building a collective memory, such as writing, and transmitting knowledge through the centuries. Other species have not left traces of themselves as we have.This privilege allowed us not to be children of chaos, but of an extraordinary logical structure that we still try to understand today. Evolutionism ignores the extraordinary uniqueness of our species, which cannot be reduced to simple formulas.

  • When we speak of "paradise," we must not fall into the trap of imagining it as a physical place with human or earthly characteristics. Paradise is not a place we can describe using the categories we use for our world, such as space, time, matter or energy. These are dimensions of reality that we know and study with science, but paradise goes beyond these limits. Science teaches us that the universe is governed by physical laws that regulate space, time, mass, energy and electrical charges. But what if there is a dimension or reality beyond these laws? We cannot rule out the possibility that a reality might exist outside the co-ordinates of space and time, a reality in which the notions of matter and energy, as we understand them, have no meaning. In the context of this reflection, paradise can be conceived as a reality that transcends all the physical laws of the universe. A reality that is not subject to the limitations of our earthly experience and that cannot be represented with human images or concepts. It is a dimension of existence that, by its very nature, is totally different from everything we know, and for this very reason we cannot imagine it as something anthropomorphic, that is, in our likeness.
  • Pope Francis was a pontiff who knew how to speak to the heart of humanity with the strength of simplicity, reminding us that the Creator of Heaven and Earth is not distant from our frailties, but walks with us.
On the occasion of the First Day of the Word of God, he wanted to give me and forty other witnesses of our time, the Bible, as a gesture of great symbolic power.
The spiritual legacy of Pope Francis will continue to speak to anyone who humbly seeks the meaning of our existence.
    • Papa Francesco è stato un pontefice che ha saputo parlare al cuore dell’umanità con la forza della semplicità, ricordandoci che il Creatore del Cielo e della Terra non è distante dalle nostre fragilità, ma cammina con noi.
In occasione della Prima Giornata della Parola di Dio, volle consegnare a me e ad altri quaranta testimoni del nostro tempo, la Bibbia, come gesto di grande forza simbolica.
L’eredità spirituale di Papa Francesco continuerà a parlare a chiunque cerchi, con umiltà, il senso del nostro esistere.
      • From a topic in the official Facebook profile dated back to April 26, 2025
  • The theory of evolution, as formulated by Darwin, is an important contribution to our understanding of the variety of the living world. However, it must be clearly stated that this theory is not scientifically rigorous in the Galilean sense of the term. True science - the kind that Galileo made great - is based on two fundamental requirements: mathematical description and experimental reproducibility.
Well, evolutionary theory is unable to describe, let alone reproduce, the crucial transition: that from inert matter to living matter, and from living matter to the form of thinking matter, i.e. man. It cannot answer an essential question: why, among millions of living species, does only man possess reason?
This profound limitation forces us to recognise that the science of life, however fascinating, is still not an exact science.
In the stories I explain why, on an experimental and mathematical level, evolutionism does not meet the rigorous criteria of true science.
    • La teoria dell’evoluzione, così come formulata da Darwin, rappresenta un contributo importante alla nostra comprensione della varietà del mondo vivente. Tuttavia, occorre dire con chiarezza che questa teoria non è scientificamente rigorosa nel senso galileiano del termine. La vera scienza – quella che Galileo ha reso grande – si fonda su due requisiti fondamentali: la descrizione matematica e la riproducibilità sperimentale.
Ebbene, la teoria evoluzionista non è in grado di descrivere né tantomeno riprodurre il passaggio cruciale: quello dalla materia inerte alla materia vivente, e dalla materia vivente alla forma di materia pensante, cioè l’uomo. Non può rispondere a una domanda essenziale: perché fra milioni di specie viventi soltanto l’uomo possiede la ragione?
Questo limite profondo ci obbliga a riconoscere che la scienza della vita, per quanto affascinante, non è ancora una scienza esatta.
Nelle stories vi spiego perché, sul piano sperimentale e matematico, l’evoluzionismo non soddisfa i criteri di rigore della vera scienza.
  • When it comes to the Big Bang, many believe that simply evoking that primordial explosion is enough to explain the origin of the world. But the issue is much deeper than that. Before the Big Bang, the fundamental laws of Nature had to be created: space, time, mass, energy, charges.
Without space, and without choosing how many dimensions it should have, we could not even exist as we are: if there were two dimensions, we would be flat like sheets of paper.
Without time, nothing would move: we would be immobile, crystallised figures. Without mass, there would

be nothing we know; without energy, no life processes. And without charges, matter would have no stability: the world would have dissolved the moment it was born.

That is why, when I think of the Creator, I do not stop at the Big Bang. I ask myself: who wrote those laws, even before the Universe began its journey?
    • Quando si parla di Big Bang, molti credono che basti evocare quell’esplosione primordiale per aver spiegato l’origine del mondo. Ma la questione è molto più profonda. Prima del Big Bang occorreva creare le leggi fondamentali della Natura: lo spazio, il tempo, la massa, l’energia, le cariche.
Senza spazio, e senza la scelta di quante dimensioni esso dovesse avere, non potremmo nemmeno esistere come siamo: se fossero state due dimensioni, saremmo piatti come fogli di carta.
Senza il tempo, nulla si muoverebbe: saremmo figure immobili, cristallizzate. Senza la massa, non ci sarebbe nulla di ciò che conosciamo; senza energia, nessun processo vitale. E senza le cariche, la materia non avrebbe stabilità: il mondo si sarebbe dissolto nell’istante stesso in cui è nato.
Per questo, quando penso al Creatore, non mi fermo al Big Bang. Mi chiedo: chi ha scritto quelle leggi, prima ancora che l’Universo iniziasse il suo cammino?
      • From a post in the Facebook profile, 6 October 2025
  • When I met John Paul II, I felt that history was offering us a unique opportunity: to heal a rift that had divided science and faith for centuries.
I explained to the Pope what the scientific world had known for some time—that the condemnation of Galileo Galilei was a human error, not a contradiction of the Truth.
The Church had punished a man who, with extraordinary humility and rigor, had opened the Book of Nature to humanity.
I spoke with John Paul II about the need to officially acknowledge that wrong, not to rewrite the past, but to give strength to the future: a future in which science and faith could return to dialogue, united in the search for Truth.
The Pope listened to me attentively, with the profound spiritual intelligence that characterized him.
It was thanks to his courage and openness that the Church, after centuries, found the strength to ask for forgiveness and to embrace Science once again.
It was a gesture that marked not only the history of the Church, but that of all humanity.
  • Quando incontrai Giovanni Paolo II, sentii che la storia ci offriva un’occasione unica: quella di sanare una frattura che per secoli aveva diviso la Scienza e la Fede.
Spiegai al Pontefice ciò che il mondo scientifico sapeva da tempo — che la condanna inflitta a Galileo Galilei fu un errore umano, non un contrasto con la Verità.
La Chiesa aveva colpito un uomo che, con straordinaria umiltà e rigore, aveva aperto all’umanità il Libro della Natura.
Parlai con Giovanni Paolo II della necessità di riconoscere ufficialmente quel torto, non per riscrivere il passato, ma per dare forza al futuro: un futuro in cui la Scienza e la Fede potessero tornare a dialogare, unite nella ricerca della Verità.
Il Papa mi ascoltò con attenzione, con quella profonda intelligenza spirituale che lo caratterizzava.

Fu grazie al suo coraggio e alla sua apertura che la Chiesa ebbe, dopo secoli, la forza di chiedere perdono e di riabbracciare la Scienza.

Un gesto che segnò non solo la storia della Chiesa, ma quella dell’intera umanità.

L'Infinito

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Antonino Zichichi, L'Infinito. L'avventura di unidea straordinaria, Net, 2004, ISBN 9788851522124, pp. 171-175.
  • Esistono diversi livelli di Infinito.
L'Infinito Potenziale: che si ottiene aggiungendo sempre qualcosa all'ultima grandissima cosa concepita: limite che non tocca mai l'Infinito, ma che ad esso si avvicina, tanto quanto si vuole.
Infinito Attuale: che si ottiene considerandolo già esistente. Esso è aldi si sopra di qualsiasi Infinito Potenziale.
Di Infinito Attuale ne esistono tanti.
Il primo livello è quello dell'Infinito detto Numerabile: rappresentato, per esempio, dall'Insieme Infinito dei numeri interi. A esso Cantor ha dato il nome di "aleph-zero".
Poi c'è l'Infinito detto Continuo, chiamato da Cantor "aleph-uno". Esso è rappresentato da tutti i punti di un segmento, anche piccolissimo, di linea, purché non nullo. Ovvero dai punti di una superficie, oda quelli di un volume. Questo livello di Infinito, detto Continuo, è rappresentato non solo dall'Insieme Infinito dei punti di un segmento, di una superficie, o di un volume, ma anche, ed equipotentemente, dall'Insieme Infinito dei numeri reali.
Sempre restando nell'ambito dell'Infinito Attuale, quindi concepibile come già esistente in tutta la sua completezza, ci sono tanti, infiniti livelli di infinito, sempre crescenti. Il livello più potente del Continuo Cantor lo denotò con "aleph-due". Ecco lo si può immaginare come il numero infinito di tutte le linee geometriche. Per i livelli ancora più potenti, "aleph-tre", ecc. non è facile immaginare Insiemi Infiniti che li possano rappresentare in modo facilmente afferrabile, come i casi sopracitati per "aleph-zero", "-uno" e "-due". A tutti gli Infiniti Attuali Cantor diede il nome di Transfiniti.
La possibilità di separare i diversi livelli di Infinito dipende dalla Matematica "cantoriana" e "non Cantoriana".
C'è infine l'Infinito Assoluto: definito come non accessibile, non determinabile, matematicamente.
Contrariamente a quello che spesso viene detto, la Matematica dell'Infinito non mette in crisi il concetto di Dio. Infatti il concetto di Infinito Assoluto sfugge totalmente all'analisi e al rigore logico-matematico. Tutto ciò che l'intelletto umano può analizzare è l'Infinito Potenziale e i Transfiniti. L'Assoluto no.
La Matematica- che nell'immanente è la forma più rigorosa di pensiero logico- arriva a conclusioni analoghe a quelle cui porta la ricerca scientifica pura. Entrambe queste discipline operano nell'immanente. La Matematica in modo totalmente speculativo: senza alcun riferimento alla realtà fisica. La Scienza Galileiana, invece, seguendo passo passo tutto ciò che fa parte del mondo che ci circonda e di cui siamo parte.
Il grande sviluppo del pensiero matematico porta a scoprire una realtà concettuale che sta al di sopra di tutta la Matematica: l'Infinito Assoluto. Questa realtà, assolutamente astratta, e pure concepita in termini di totale rigore logico, nessun intelletto umano potrà mai conquistarla.
Esattamente come avviene nella Scienza: nessuno scienziato potrà mai capire fino in fondo il Grande Disegno. Richard Feynman (uno dei più grandi fisici teorici di questo secolo) era convinto che noi stessimo -e stiamo- vivendo un momento straordinario: quello della scoperta delle Leggi Fondamentali della Natura. Dobbiamo pertanto considerarci molto fortunati in quanto questo periodo è destinato a chiudersi. Se così dovesse essere, la Scienza Galileiana arriverebbe al traguardo dopo appena quattro secoli. E dopo? Quale futuro potrebbe avere la Scienza oltre la comprensione rigorosa e totale della Logica del Creato? Una cosa è sicura: siamo dinanzi a un problema la cui risposta è nota soltanto a Colui che ha fatto il mondo. Ecco perché vorrei incoraggiare il lettore a riflettere sull'ipotesi a me tanto cara: l'uomo continuerà a scoprire nuovi fenomeni, nuove frontiere, senza poter mai arrivare a decifrare totalmente il Grande Disegno. Il Grande Disegno resterà sempre al di sopra di tutta la Scienza, esattamente come l'Infinito Assoluto sta al di sopra di tutta la matematica.
  • There are different levels of Infinity.
The Potential Infinity: which is obtained by always adding something to the last great thing conceived: a limit that never touches the Infinity, but which approaches it, as much as one wants..
Actual Infinity: which is obtained by considering it already existing. It is above any Potential Infinite.. There are many Current Infinitives. The first level is that of the Infinite called Countable: represented, for example, by the Infinite Set of integers. Cantor gave it the name "aleph-zero".
Then there is the Infinite called Continuous, called by Cantor "aleph-one". It is represented by all the points of a segment, even a very small one, of a line, provided that it is not zero. That is, from the points of a surface, it smells those of a volume. This level of Infinity, called Continuous, is represented not only by the Infinite Set of points of a segment, a surface, or a volume, but also, and equipotently, by the Infinite Set of real numbers.
Always remaining within the scope of the Actual Infinity, therefore conceivable as already existing in all its completeness, there are many, infinite levels of infinity, always increasing.
The most powerful level of the Cantor Continous denoted it by "aleph-due". Here you can imagine it as the infinite number of all geometric lines. For even more powerful levels, "aleph-three", etc. it is not easy to imagine Infinite Sets that can represent them in an easily graspable way, such as the above cases for "aleph-zero", "-one" and "-two". To all the Actual Infinite Cantors he gave the name Transfinite.
The possibility of separating the different levels of Infinite depends on "Cantorian" and "non-Cantorian" Mathematics.. :Finally there is the Absolute Infinite: defined as not accessible, not determinable, mathematically.
Contrary to what is often said, the Mathematics of Infinity does not challenge the concept of God. In fact, the concept of Absolute Infinity totally escapes analysis and logical-mathematical rigor. All that the human intellect can analyze is the Potential Infinite and the Transfinite. The Absolute does not.
Mathematics - which in the immanent is the most rigorous form of logical thinking - reaches conclusions similar to those to which pure scientific research leads. Both of these disciplines operate in the immanent. Mathematics in a totally speculative way: without any reference to physical reality. Galilean Science, on the other hand, following step by step everything that is part of the world around us and of which we are a part.
The great development of mathematical thought leads to the discovery of a conceptual reality that lies above all Mathematics: the Absolute Infinity. This reality, absolutely abstract, and even conceived in terms of total logical rigor, no human intellect will ever be able to conquer.
Exactly as happens in Science: no scientist will ever be able to fully understand the Great Design. Richard Feynman (one of the greatest theoretical physicists of this century) was convinced that we were - and are - experiencing an extraordinary moment: that of the discovery of the Fundamental Laws of Nature. We must therefore consider ourselves very fortunate in that this period is destined to close. If this were to be the case, Galilean Science would reach the finish line after just four centuries. And after that? What future could Science have beyond a rigorous and total understanding of the Logic of Creation? One thing is certain: we are faced with a problem whose answer is known only to the One who made the world. This is why I would encourage the reader to reflect on the hypothesis so dear to me: man will continue to discover new phenomena, new frontiers, without ever being able to fully decipher the Great Design. The Great Design will always remain above all Science, just as the Absolute Infinite is above all mathematics.

Quotes about

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  • At this point, I wanted to find out what other people thought of Zichichi [...]. I discovered that for years he had been ridiculed by his colleagues and by reviewers, and that he was a real 'embarrassment' to science. In other words, he was a useful man for securing funding, thanks to his connections with political and religious power, but someone to be ashamed of from an intellectual point of view. It's more or less like the 'untouchables' in ancient India, who did jobs that were considered unworthy and unclean, and whose very shadow was contaminating.

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