Title: Rogue Waves and Black Holes: Breaking Giants at the Edge of Catastrophe
Speaker: Francesco Fedele, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Host: Prof. Flavio Fenton

Abstract: Rogue waves are sudden, giant ocean waves that can rise to more than twice the height of the surrounding waves. But do these oceans giant breaks—releasing their energy as turbulence, whitecaps, and vortices—or can they grow unbounded? They break! I will discuss how, near breaking, waves follow a slow–fast dynamics: the fluid motion evolves gradually, while the crest shape changes rapidly in a proper relational clock. This behavior corresponds to a fold catastrophe, a geometric skeleton describing a wave near collapse. Waves reach a breaking inception point measured by the silver ratio, the little brother of the golden ratio. This inception marks the true “point of no return,” preceding the dramatic breaking onset—analogous to the event and apparent horizons of collapsing black holes. This gravitational analogy reveals a deep geometric structure underlying rogue waves, showing how extreme energy and hidden relational timing combine to produce nature’s most sudden and striking events.