| Top Quark: The Elusive Truth | | |  | | Michael Peskin | | The top quark is the heaviest known type of quark, and possibly the last. Particle physicists sometimes refer to it as the "truth” quark, not always with tongue in cheek. The top quark might be just an ordinary quark, no stranger than the "strange" one, but it might hold the key to major questions of Nature through its connection to the origin of mass, the Higgs boson, and cosmic dark matter. At the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, hundreds of these heavy quarks have been observed and some first snapshots of their behavior have been obtained. At the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, millions of the heavy quarks will be produced. This lecture will revie [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Dec 02, 2009 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Universe from Beginning to End | | |  | | Brian Schmidt - Australian National University | | Astronomers believe our Universe began in a Big Bang, and is expanding around us. Brian Schmidt will describe the life of the Universe that we live in, and how astronomers have used observations to trace our Universe's history back more than 13 Billion years. With this data a puzzling picture has been pieced together where 96% of the Cosmos is made up of two mysterious substances, Dark Matter and Dark Energy. These two mysterious forms of matter are in a battle for domination of the Universe, and Schmidt will describe experiments that are monitoring the struggle between Dark Energy and Dark Matter, trying better understand these elusive pieces of our Universe, and predict the ultimate fate o [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Jun 03, 2009 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Drunkard's Walk | | |  | | Leonard Mlodinow - California Institute of Technology | | In 'The Drunkard's Walk', acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance. By showing us the true nature of chance and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives us the tools we need to make more informed decisions.
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| From Tornadoes to Black Holes: How to Survive an Information Catastrophe | | |  | | Patrick Hayden | | Black holes are regions of space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape from them, not even light. This isn't science fiction - there's even a gigantic black hole at the center of our galaxy. It's hard to imagine a more effective way to irrevocably erase and destroy a computer's hard drive than to drop it into a nice big black hole. But is the information on that drive really gone forever? Paradoxically, there's a good chance that not only does the information come back, it comes back in the blink of an eye. This surprise return of the information is based on the same principles that might someday make reliable quantum computers a reality. In fact, engineers are already exploiting th [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Apr 01, 2009 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Physics of Impossible Things | | |  | | Ben Schumacher - Kenyon College | | Some things can happen in our Universe, and others cannot. The laws of physics establish the boundary between possibility and impossibility. Physicists naturally spend most of their time thinking about the possible. In this lecture, however, we will make a brief reconnaissance across the frontier to study impossible things and discover the surprising connections between them. We will encounter standard science-fiction devices like time machines and faster-than-light spaceships -- as well as other, less-familiar prodigies including quantum cloners and bounded electromagnetic miracles. A safe return to the real world is unconditionally guaranteed. information, science fiction, time travel [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Dec 03, 2008 @ 7:00:00 am | |
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| Anticipating A New Golden Age | | |  | | Frank Wilczek | | Our present Core Theory of matter (aka “standard model”) was born in the 1970s, a Golden Age for fundamental physics. To date it has passed every experimental test, extending – by many orders of magnitude – to higher energies, shorter distances, and greater precision than were available in the 1970s. Yet we are not satisfied, because the Core Theory postulates four separate interactions and several different kinds of matter, and its equations are lopsided. In this lecture, Prof. Wilczek will describe powerful and extremely beautiful ideas for restoring unity and symmetry to the fundamental laws. These ideas are firmly rooted in empirical reality, but at present the evidence for the [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Nov 05, 2008 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Before the Big Bang: Is There Evidence For Something And If So, What? | | |  | | Roger Penrose | | There is now a great deal of evidence confirming the existence of a very hot and dense early stage of the universe. Much of this data comes from a detailed study of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - radiation from the early universe that was most recently measured by NASA's WMAP satellite. But the information presents new puzzles for scientists. One of the most blatant examples is an apparent paradox related to the second law of thermodynamics. Although some have argued that the hypothesis of inflationary cosmology solves some of the puzzles, profound issues remain. In this talk, Professor Penrose will describe a very different proposal, one that suggests a succession of universes pri [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Oct 01, 2008 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Time and Einstein in the 21st Century: The coolest stuff in the universe | | |  | | William (Bill) Phillips - National Institute of Standards and Technology | | At the beginning of the 20th century Einstein published three revolutionary ideas that changed forever how we view Nature. At the beginning of the 21st century Einstein's thinking is shaping one of the key scientific and technological wonders of contemporary life: atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations. Today, atomic clocks are still being improved, using Einstein's ideas to cool the atoms to incredibly low temperatures. Atomic gases reach temperatures less than a billionth of a degree [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Jun 04, 2008 @ 7:00:00 am | |
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| Science Fiction and Reality | | |  | | Gerard t'Hooft | | In the recent past, rapid scientific and technological developments have had tremendous impact on human society. Notably, the personal computer, internet and mobile telephones changed the world and shrank our planet. These developments are vastly different from the forecasts by science fiction authors who promised us space travel and intelligent humanoid robots. Could real scientists have done a better job in forecasting the future? What can we say about the future now? Many science fiction fantasies will never materialize. Some will, but only over time spans of millions of years rather than a couple of centuries. Nature's laws are very strict and forbidding but also show gaps that might pr [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday May 07, 2008 @ 7:00:00 am | |
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| The Curious World of Probabilities | | |  | | Jeffrey Rosenthal - University of Toronto | | Probabilities and randomness arise whenever we're not sure what will happen next. They apply to everything from lottery jackpots to airplane crashes; email spam to insurance policies; medical studies to election polls. This exploration of odds and oddities will explain how a Probability Perspective can shed new light on many familiar situations in our everyday lives, and how computer algorithms which use randomness can be used to address problems in many branches of science. | | Date: Wednesday Apr 02, 2008 @ 7:00:00 am | |
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| What Banged? | | |  | | Neil Turok - Perimeter Institute | | The evidence that the universe emerged 14 billion years ago from an event called 'the big bang' is overwhelming. Yet the cause of this event remains deeply mysterious. In the conventional picture, the 'initial singularity' is unexplained. It is simply assumed that the universe somehow sprang into existence full of 'inflationary' energy, blowing up the universe into the large, smooth state we observe today. While this picture is in excellent agreement with current observations, it is both contrived and incomplete, leading us to suspect that it is not the final word. In this lecture, the standard inflationary picture will be contrasted with a new view of the initial singularity suggested [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Mar 05, 2008 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldy Privatizing Space | | |  | | Michael Belfiore | | In the 'second space age', human spaceflight is no longer the domain of governments. Dream-chasing entrepreneurs and clever engineers are aggressively blazing new trails into the heavens and preparing the world for an era of space tourism, ultra fast point-to-point earth travel and even orbiting hotels. Having gained inside access into the top private space programs, science journalist Michael Belfiore will share his many insights on the history-making flights, the failures and fatalities, as well as the enduring passion and dreams of the real estate tycoons, dot-com billionaires, a video game programmer and other business mavericks for whom the sky is no longer the limit. They are fueling [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Feb 06, 2008 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Large Hadron Collider - World's Most Powerful Microscope | | |  | | Robert Orr, John Ellis - European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) | | International researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in Geneva, Switzerland, will soon embark on one of science's greatest adventures. With its very high energy, previously seen only in cosmic rays, the particle collider will probe the inner structure of matter at distances ten times smaller than any previous experiments. The LHC will address many of the mysteries surrounding the smallest particles of matter. It may also pierce secrets that the Universe has hidden since the early stages of the Big Bang, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of matter itself. This will be the largest scientific experiment ever attempted and the complex international efforts to bring the 2 [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Nov 07, 2007 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| From Einstein's Intuition to Quantum Bits | | |  | | Alain Aspect - Institut d'Optique Graduate School | | Many experts are convinced that large scale, practical implementations of quantum information systems hold great promise for society, much as the laser and the transistor have already revolutionized the world. This stems from a long history of research that included an intense, raging battle of epic proportions between scientific giants. In tracing these steps, you will learn why Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr argued over the nature of entangled states where pairs of sub-atomic particles are strangely correlated from 1935 until their very deaths. You will also find out how, decades later, John Bell discovered his famous inequalities that made it possible for experimentalists, including Alain [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Oct 03, 2007 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Death of the Dinos: Giant Impacts and Biological Crises | | |  | | Jay Melosh - University of Arizona | | Sixty-five million years ago dinosaurs ruled the warm Cretaceous Earth. Without warning, this world was swept away forever by the impact of an asteroid about 15 km in diameter, leaving a huge scar now called the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, Mexico. This catastrophe set the stage for the ascendance of our own biological group, the mammals. Although the fact of this impact is now established beyond doubt, the precise means by which an impact could wipe out such a large fraction of the Earth's inhabitants is not fully understood. Recent study of the physical consequences of a large impact on the Earth have revealed a plethora of potentially disastrous effects, ranging from an immediate firesto [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Jun 06, 2007 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Quantum Cryptography: A Tale of Secrets Hidden and Revealed Through the Laws of Physics | | |  | | Daniel Gottesman - Perimeter Institute | | Sensitive information can be valuable to others - from your personal credit card numbers to state and military secrets. Throughout history, sophisticated codes have been developed in an attempt to keep important data from prying eyes. But now, new technologies are emerging based on the surprising laws of quantum physics that govern the atomic scale. These powerful techniques threaten to crack some secret codes in widespread use today and, at the same time, offer new quantum cryptographic protocols which could one day profoundly alter the way we safeguard critical information. Quantum cryptography, quantum physics, Daniel Gottesman, cryptography, one-time pad, RSA, encryption, public key, [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Apr 04, 2007 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Life, the Universe, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) | | |  | | Jill Tarter - SETI Institute | | Hollywood movies about aliens abound, but do they really exist? The real scientific search for evidence of life, and particularly intelligent life, elsewhere in the cosmos is just as exciting as the reel version, and a lot more logical. So far, there is life-as-we-know-it to guide our speculations and observations. But a new appreciation for the tenacity of life, a growing respect for the world of microbes, and new search technologies involving observatories and spacecraft are rapidly expanding our viewpoint. Many expect surprises. SETI is at the forefront of this research and has plans to extend its range out even further into the galaxy, looking for evidence of someone elses tech [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Mar 07, 2007 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Fundamental Physics in 2010 | | |  | | Nima Arkani-Hamed | | Will big questions be answered when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switches on in 2007? What will scientists find? Where might the research lead? Nima Arkani-Hamed, a noted particle theorist, is a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He investigates a number of mysteries and interactions in nature puzzles that are likely to have experimental consequences in the next few years via particle accelerators, like the LHC, as well as cosmological observations. fundamental physics, Nima Arkani-Hamed, 'Future of Fundamental Physics', general relativity, quantum mechanics, Large Hadrom Collider, L H C, quark, quantum gravity, string theory, special relativity, standard model, Planck s [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Feb 07, 2007 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| From here to eternity: Global warming in geologic time | | |  | | David Archer - University of Chicago | | Using results from models of the atmosphere/ocean/sediment carbon cycle, the impacts of fossil-fuel CO2 release will be examined including the effect on climate many thousands of years into the future, rather than for just a few centuries as commonly claimed. Prof. Archer will explain how aspects of the Earth system, such as the growth or melting of the great ice sheets, the thawing of permafrost, and the release of methane from the methane hydrate deposits in the deep ocean, take thousands of years to respond to a change in climate. The duration of our potential climate adventure is comparable to the pacing of climate changes in the past, which enables us to use the geologic record of pa [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Dec 06, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Time and Motion | | |  | | Harvey Brown - University of Oxford | | Newton's first law of motion - and the very meaning of inertia - has been described as either completely obvious (D'Alembert) or a 'logician's nightmare' (ex-editor of the American Journal of Physics). Sometimes the simplest things in physics are the most subtle. The first law will be described in historical context, explaining a connection with the ancient Greeks distinction between natural and violent motion and with Descartes' natural philosophy. You will also learn why it still requires careful handling and what it tells us about time in physics. 'Time and Motion', Harvey Brown, time, motion, relative, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Galileo, Copernicanism, Descartes, inertia, Newton [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Nov 01, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines: Limits of Truth and Mind | | |  | | Janna Levin - Columbia University | | From Levins recent book comes a strange if true story of coded secrets, psychotic delusions, mathematics, and war. This story of greatness and weakness, of genius and delusion, circulates around the parallel lives of Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and Alan Turing, the extraordinary code breaker during World War II. Taken together their work proved that there are limits to knowledge, that machines could be taught to compute, that one day there could be artificial intelligence. Yet Gödel believed in transmigration of the soul and Turing concluded that we were soulless biological machines. And their suicides were complementary. Gödel, delusional and paranoid, starved [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Oct 04, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Impossible Crystals | | |  | | Paul Steinhardt | | This is a story of how the impossible became possible. How, for centuries, scientists were absolutely sure that solids (as well as decorative patterns like tiling and quilts) could only have certain symmetries - such as square, hexagonal and triangular - and that most symmetries, including five-fold symmetry in the plane and icosahedral symmetry in three dimensions (the symmetry of a soccer ball), were strictly forbidden. Then, about twenty years ago, a new kind of pattern, known as a 'quasicrystal,' was envisaged that shatters the symmetry restrictions and allows for an infinite number of new patterns and structures that had never been seen before, suggesting a whole new class of material [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Sep 06, 2006 @ 7:00:00 am | |
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| Faster than the Speed of Light - Could the laws of physics change? | | |  | | Joao Magueijo - Imperial College | | The laws of physics are usually meant to be set in stone; variability is not usually part of physics. Yet contradicting Einstein's tenet of the constancy of the speed of light raises nothing less than that possibility. I will discuss some of the more dramatic implications of a varying speed of light. João Magueijo is Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is currently visiting Perimeter Institute and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics at Cambridge University, and has been a visiting scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University. Joao Magueijo, Theory of Relativit [read more]. | | Date: Friday Jun 23, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Quantum and the Cosmos | | |  | | Edward Kolb - University of Chicago | | Long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, the universe consisted of an exploding quantum soup of elementary particles. Encoded in this formless, shapeless soup were seeds of cosmic structure, which over billions of years grew into the beautiful and complex universe we observe today. The lecture will explore the connection between the inner space of the quantum and the outer space of the cosmos. The inner space/outer space connection may hold the key to the nature of the dark matter holding together our galaxy and the mysterious dark energy pulling apart our universe. Edward W. Kolb (known to most as Rocky) is a founding head of the NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Group [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Jun 07, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| A Night with Nobel - The Origin of Mass and the Feebleness of Gravity | | | | | Frank Wilczek | | Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 asserts that energy and mass are different aspects of the same reality. It is usually associated with the idea that small amounts of mass can be converted into large amounts of energy. For fundamental physics, however, the more important idea is just the opposite. Researchers want to explain how mass itself arises, by explaining it in terms of more basic concepts. In this lecture targeted for a general audience, Prof. Wilczek will explain how this goal can, to a remarkable extent, be achieved. He will also discuss some of the consequences - an explanation of why gravity is so feeble - and suggestions for new physical phenomena at the Large Hadron Collider (L [read more]. | | Date: Tuesday Jun 06, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Search for Miss Leavitt | | |  | | George Johnson | | Inside Harvard College Observatory in 1904, a young woman named Henrietta Swan Leavitt sat hunched over a stack of glass photographic plates, patiently counting stars. The images had been taken by a telescope high in the Peruvian Andes, and Miss Leavitt was given the tedious chore of measuring the brightness of thousands of tiny lights, something that would now be done by machine. Her job title was 'computer,' but during the next few years she rose above her station as a tabulator of data and discovered a new law, one that would change forever our view of the universe. George Johnson, the author of Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Unive [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday May 03, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Programming the Universe | | |  | | Seth Lloyd - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | | The universe computes: every atom, electron, and elementary particle registers bits of information, and every time two particles collide those bits are flipped and processed. By hacking the computational power of the universe, we can build quantum computers which store and process information at the level of atoms and electrons. This computational capacity underlies the generation of complex systems, and provides insight into the origin of life and its future. Seth Lloyd is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the author of 'Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos' which asks [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Apr 19, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Mission to Mars: Still Roving on the Red Planet | | |  | | John Grant - Smithsonian Institution | | An expected 90 day robotic odyssey on Mars has stretched into a two year scientific marathon. Dr. Grant, a geologist with the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, helped pick the landing sites and works on day-to-day operations of the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers. Youll see the latest photos, learn what Martian mysteries have been uncovered and find out how scientists plan to push the limits of future robots in space. Dr. John A. Grant, III joined the Smithsonian in the fall of 2000 as a Geologist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum. He has been a member of the Science Team for the Mars Exploration Rovers since 2002, is one of six Science [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Feb 01, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| Are You Conscious? | | |  | | Jay Ingram - Discovery Channel Canada | | The scientific approach to consciousness is a relatively new pursuit, but it has already revealed some startling facts about the cavalcade of feelings, images and thoughts that stream through our heads every waking moment. Jay Ingram will present some of the most surprising of these in a talk based on his best-selling book, Theatre of the Mind. Jay Ingram is the author of several bestselling books, including The Science of Everyday Life, The Barmaids Brain and The Velocity of Honey. He is producer and co-host of the Discovery Channels award-winning show Daily Planet, and also contributes a weekly science column to the Toronto Star. He holds two ACTRAs, the Royal Society of Canada McNeil [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Jan 04, 2006 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Drug Trial: You Be the Judge | | |  | | Miriam Shuchman - State University of New York at Buffalo | | How do you advise a scientist who says she has information that could be vital to the event health but shes been told to keep it a secret? In this talk Dr. Shuchman will discuss the dramatic act of blowing the whistle in science. Drawing on the extensive information in her best-selling book including interviews with whistleblowers, surveys of scientists and public testimony - and adding new material that isnt in the book Shuchman will outline the benefits of scientific whistleblowing over the past 40 years. Then she will describe its aftermath. In case after case, Shuchman will give audience members the information and ask their opinions of what should have happened. Miriam Shuchman is [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Dec 07, 2005 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Big Bang | | |  | | Simon Singh | | Simon Singh grew up in Somerset, and completed his undergraduate work at Imperial College London, and his Ph.D. at Cambridge University and CERN. He has worked with the BBCs Science Department since 1990. In 1996, Singh directed the award-winning documentary Fermats Last Theorem. The documentary was also nominated for an Emmy under the American title The Proof. He is the author of three books, most recently, the Big Bang, a history of cosmology. | | Date: Wednesday Nov 02, 2005 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Quest for Supersymmetry | | |  | | Edward Witten | | Edward Witten is one of the worlds preeminent string theorists. Among his many accomplishments, he is widely known for showing how five different variations of string theory all belong within a single framework. His awards range from a MacArthur 'genius grant' to the Fields Medal - the highest honour in the world of mathematics. Professor Witten will examine key discoveries made by physicists in the 20th century such as the detection of antimatter. He will then describe how many of todays leading scientists are working at the high energy frontier of elementary particle accelerators in their quest to uncover the quantum structures of space and time. supersymmetry, Edward Witten, pa [read more]. | | Date: Wednesday Apr 06, 2005 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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| The Black Hole Wars | | |  | | Leonard Susskind - Stanford University | | The strange paradoxes and puzzles of the quantum behaviour of black holes and the things that fall into them led to a spirited battle of ideas between Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind and other scientists. Resolving the debate may change our entire understanding of space, time, matter and information is the entire world, for example, a quantum hologram? | | Date: Wednesday Feb 02, 2005 @ 6:30:00 pm | |
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| The Florentine Heretic? Galileo, the church and the cosmos | | |  | | David Lindberg | | Galileos campaign on behalf of the modern view of the solar system is one of the most dramatic events in the history of relations between Christianity and science endlessly portrayed as a battle between theological interests and scientific freedom. But this traditional story is filled with factual errors. And when human fears, rivalries, revenge and the like are taken into account, the story takes on an altogether different cast. In Professor Lindbergs retelling, the ideological side of the story will be balanced with its richness as a human event. | | Date: Wednesday Jan 05, 2005 @ 4:05:00 pm | |
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| Harnessing the Quantum World | | |  | | Raymond Laflamme - University of Waterloo/IQC | | Are you ready for this upgrade? The very foundation of computer science is changing. As Moore's Law draws to a close, rules of quantum physics are taking over. Learn how leading researchers are using counterintuitive effects, such as superposition, in their quest to build ultra-powerful quantum computers. You'll see how quantum particles behave, are controlled and, ultimately, used to calculate. | | Date: Thursday Dec 02, 2004 @ 4:20:00 pm | |
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| The Stability of the Solar System | | |  | | Scott Tremaine | | For over three hundred years, physicists and mathematicians have been trying to understand how stable the Earth really is. Could gravitational forces from other planets lead to drastic changes in Earths orbit? Will we collide with other planets or be ejected into interstellar space? | | Date: Wednesday Jun 02, 2004 @ 7:00:00 pm | |
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