Printer friendly version

Laboratory sponsors public lecture on cosmology

As part of the Laboratory's Cosmology Summer Workshop at St. John's College in Santa Fe, cosmologist Rocky (Edward W.) Kolb will present a public lecture at 7 p.m., July 22 on the application of elementary-particle physics to the very early universe.

Kolb is founding head of the Astrophysics Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. The talk, "The Quantum and the Cosmos," is in the Great Hall of the Peterson Student Center at St. John's College and is free an open to the public.

Kolb maintains that 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 complex universe observed today. Kolb's 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 the universe.

Kolb is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society and has served on the editorial boards of numerous international scientific journals. He also is a member of Astronomy Magazine's Editorial Advisory Board. Kolb was the 2003 recipient of the Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the 1993 Quantrell Prize for teaching excellence at the University of Chicago. He is a co-author of "The Early Universe," the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology, and his book for the general public, "Blind Watchers of the Sky," received the 1996 Emme Award from the American Astronomical Society.

A native of New Orleans, Kolb received his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Texas and did postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology. In 1980 he was a J. Robert Oppenheimer Research Fellow and later became deputy group leader of the Theoretical Astrophysics group at the Laboratory.

For more information, contact Laura Mulry or Andra Maguran at 984-6104. Seating is limited to 300.

The workshop is open to all Laboratory employees, who are encouraged to register at the conference Web site. A van will be commuting from the Laboratory to St. John's College for the duration of the workshop at the main Theoretical (T) Division building at 8:30 a.m. Those interested should write to Yongzhong Xu at xuyz@hep.upenn.edu by electronic mail.

For more information or to register, go to the workshop Web site at http://t8web.lanl.gov/people/salman/sf03/ online or contact Salman Habib of Elementary Particles and Field Theory (T-8) at habib@lanl.gov by electronic mail.

-- Todd Hanson

Other Headlines