| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| Strange Views of Space and Time: From Einstein to String Theory | | |  | | Gary Horowitz - University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) | | In honour of the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's 'miraculous year', I will describe the modern view of space and time. I will start with special relativity, then describe how space and time are modified in Einstein's general theory of relativity, and end with recent ideas coming out of string theory. In all cases, the view of space and time arising from modern physics is radically different from our everyday experience, yet many of their strange properties have already been confirmed by experiment. | | Date: Tuesday Nov 15, 2005 @ 3:00:00 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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| Faster than the Speed of Light: Could the Laws of Physics Change? | | | | | Joao Magueijo - Imperial College | | Could the laws of physics change? 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. varying constant, Einstein, time dilation, length contraction, horizons, Big Bang, grand-unified theory, Planck length, Planck time, gravity, space, time, quantum gravity, varying alpha, Kelvin, q [read more]. | | Date: Saturday Oct 22, 2005 @ 2:00:00 pm | |
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| June and September 1905: Reshaping Space, Time and Energy | | |  | | John Rigden - American Institute of Physics | | Few, if any, papers have attracted as much attention as Einsteins June paper on the Special Theory of Relativity and no equation of physics has become part of common discourse except for the equation Einstein presented in his September paper: E = mc2. The concepts of space and time are ubiquitous in physics and, since the Special Theory of Relativity fundamentally altered these concepts, the impact of the June paper on physics has been pervasive. With the additional assertion, made in the June paper, that the speed of light is a constant for all observers, time and space became relative. From his Theory of Relativity, Einstein produced his September surprise: ponderable mass and incorporea [read more]. | | Date: Sunday Oct 02, 2005 @ 2:00:00 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 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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