Professor Paul Goerss from Northwestern speaking about "The geometry of the moduli stack of formal groups and chromatic convergence"

Abstract: The Hopkins/Ravenel theorem on chromatic convergence says that a p-local finite spectrum X is the inverse limit of localizations of X at complex orientable homology theories which see only data from finite height formal groups. There are two parts to the proof: some basic homotopy theory and an algebraic calculation. I'd like to revisit the algebraic part, as it has a very simple and conceptual proof arising from the geometry of the moduli stack of formal groups. Most of the talk will be spent on explaining exactly what the last sentence means.