Archive for 2013
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of S. James Gates Jr.
Dr. Sylvester James Gates Jr. is a theoretical physicist who uses mathematics to explore the fundamental symmetries that are revealed when we seek to answer the most basic question about the matter in our universe—”What is inside of everything?” He is also someone whose work makes connections across disciplines, between science and history, the arts, […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of George Coyne
This year’s conference title, “The Universe at Its Limits,” implies a notion of boundaries—spatial and temporal, beginning and end. As a result, we inevitably consider the questions of where the universe came from, when it emerged, where it’s going, and whether its development is the product of necessity or chance, design or randomness. The debate […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of Lawrence Krauss
Much of the most exciting research being done today feeds our innate human curiosity. It seeks to answer the larger questions always looming in the back of our minds of who we are, how we got here, and if we are unique. Professor Lawrence M. Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist and astronomer. Perhaps […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of George Smoot
Because it takes time for light to travel to Earth from the reaches of space, the farther one looks, the earlier in history one sees. Thus, questions about the formation of stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, and indeed about the beginning of the universe itself are addressed in cosmological investigations of primordial light from the heavens […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of Samuel Ting
Discovering the fundamental nature of the universe requires scientists with vision, ingenuity, and persistence. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Samuel Ting exemplifies these important traits. His experiments have discovered one of the six known quarks, the fundamental building blocks of all matter, and more recently have been probing matter, antimatter, and dark matter from a detector […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of Alex Filippenko
Dr. Alex Filippenko has been involved with some of the most exciting and impactful observational astronomy studies of the last 30 years. He and his coworkers study the light generated by supernovae in an effort to better understand supernova processes themselves, as well as how to use them as indicators of larger cosmological processes. In 1998, […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of Tara Shears
What are the basic building blocks of matter? And how does the macroscopic universe as we encounter it today arise from their interactions? Our current best answers to these questions are given by the Standard Model of particle physics, according to which there are twelve kinds of fundamental particles of matter (the quarks and the […]
Nobel Conference 49 Profile of Frank Wilczek
What is matter? We’ve come a long way toward a solid understanding of matter in the last forty years, while at the same time gaining new insight into the nature of space and an inspiring vision of the symmetry of physical law. Emerging from the strange and once-revolutionary ideas of quantum theory and special relativity, […]
Nobel Conference 49: The Universe at Its Limits
What is the universe made of? Where did it come from? Where is it going? Nobel Conference 49, “The Universe at Its Limits,” to be held on October 1 and 2, 2013, will explore some of the most fundamental questions of science in light of recent discoveries: Western science has roots in ancient Greece, where […]