Angelo Loinger
Angelo Loinger | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Italian |
| Known for | Arguments against the physical reality of gravitational waves and black holes |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics, general relativity |
| Institutions | University of Milan |
Angelo Loinger is an Italian theoretical physicist, formerly of the Dipartimento di Fisica at the University of Milan, known for a long series of papers challenging mainstream interpretations of general relativity. He is listed in The Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists.
Work
Loinger is best known for arguing that gravitational waves and black holes are not genuine consequences of exact general relativity. In numerous papers (many posted to the physics arXiv) and in his book On Black Holes and Gravitational Waves, he maintains that gravitational waves are "phantom" entities with no physical generation mechanism and that black holes are fictive objects. These positions run counter to the scientific mainstream; the LIGO collaboration reported the first direct detection of gravitational waves from a black-hole merger in 2015, and gravitational-wave astronomy has since become an established field.
Together with Tiziana Marsico, Loinger also argued (in "On the GR-speeds of light and particles", arXiv:1201.0114) that in general relativity the velocity of a particle is constrained only to be lower than the local light velocity, which in certain metrics may exceed the light velocity in vacuo. On this basis he treated superluminal signalling as not excluded by the theory.
Earlier in his career Loinger published on quantum mechanics, including work with Piero Caldirola.