Category: Nobel Conference 49

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…