The University of Adelaide’s School of Chemistry & Physics presents free Public Lectures...

• Speaker Series
• Podcasts available to download

Speaker Series

	"Cracking the Einstein Code - Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics" presented by Fulvio Melia, University of Arizona Date: Thursday 17th September Time: 6pm Venue: Napier Lecture Theatre 102 Admission: Free! Download the podcast!
	“Exploding Stars and the Accelerating Cosmos: Einstein's Blunder Undone” presented by Professor Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University Date: Thursday 19th November 2009 Time: 6:30pm Venue: Union Hall (follow the signs), University of Adelaide, North Terrace Admission: Free!
	"The Arrow of Time" presented by Professor Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology Date: Monday 23rd November 2009 Time: 6pm Venue: Union Hall (follow the signs), University of Adelaide, North Terrace Admission: Free! Download the podcast!
	"Modern Subatomic Physics: From the Big Bang to the Dark Side of the Universe" presented by Professor Tony Thomas, Australian Laureate Fellow and Elder Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide Date: Thursday 10th December 2009 Time: 6:30pm Venue: Union Hall (follow the signs), University of Adelaide, North Terrace Admission: Free! Download the podcast!

Speaker: Professor Fulvio Melia, University of Arizona

Title: “Cracking the Einstein Code - Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics”

Venue, Time & Date: Napier Lecture Theatre 102, 6pm, Thursday 17th September 2009

Abstract: Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity describes the effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time. But for more than four decades after its publication, the theory remained largely a curiosity for scientists; however accurate it seemed, Einstein’s mathematical code—represented by six interlocking equations—was one of the most difficult to crack in all of science. That is, until a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate solved the great riddle in 1963. Roy Kerr’s solution emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same year and provided fertile testing ground—at long last—for general relativity. Today, scientists routinely cite the Kerr solution, but even among specialists, few know the story of how Kerr cracked Einstein’s code.

Biography: Fulvio Melia was educated at Melbourne University and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and held a post-doctoral research position at the University of Chicago before taking an assistant professorship at Northwestern University in 1987. Moving to the University of Arizona as an associate professor in 1991, he became a full professor in 1993. From 1988 to 1995, he was a Presidential Young Investigator (under President Ronald Reagan), and then an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1989 to 1992. He became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2002. He is also a Professorial Fellow in the School of Physics, Melbourne University. From 1996 to 2002, he was a Scientific Editor with the Astrophysical Journal, and since then has been an Associate Editor with the Astrophysical Journal Letters. He is also the Chief Editor of the Theoretical Astrophysics series of books at the University of Chicago Press.

Speaker: Professor Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University

Title: “Exploding Stars and the Accelerating Cosmos: Einstein's Blunder Undone”

Venue, Time & Date: Union Hall, 6:30pm Thursday 19th November 2009

Abstract: Recent observations of exploding stars discovered halfway across the universe reveal an astonishing fact: the expansion of the Universe is speeding up! Apparently, the universe is dominated by a mysterious "dark energy" that drives cosmic acceleration. The dark energy may be a modern form of the "cosmological constant" created by Einstein in 1917, but abandoned by Einstein in the 1930s. Robert P. Kirshner, a distinguished astronomer and teacher at Harvard University, explains this astonishing new picture of the universe in a lively, richly illustrated presentation, drawing on his own first-hand account of the discovery.

Biography: Robert P. Kirshner is Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University. An author of over 250 scientific publications, Kirshner has also written for National Geographic, Sky & Telescope, Natural History, and Scientific American magazines and is a frequent public speaker on science. His award-winning popular-level book The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos is now in paperback and has been translated into 4 languages. At Harvard, Kirshner teaches a large undergraduate course for students who are not concentrating in the sciences called The Energetic Universe. Kirshner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He recently finished a term as President of the American Astronomical Society. Kirshner received the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004. In 2007, Kirshner and his colleagues of the High-Z Supernova Team (led by Professor Brian Schmidt of the ANU and including many of Kirshner's former students and postdocs) shared in the Gruber Prize in Cosmology.

Speaker: Professor Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology

Title: "The Arrow of Time"

Venue, Time & Date: Union Hall, 6pm Monday 23rd November 2009

Abstract: Why do we remember the past, but not the future? Why don't we meet people who grow younger as they age? Why do things, left by themselves, tend to become messier and more chaotic? What would Maxwell's Demon say to a Boltzmann Brain? The answers can be traced to the moment of the Big Bang -- or possibly before.

Time pervades our lives -- we keep track of it, lament its loss, put it to good use. The rhythms of our clocks and our bodies let us measure the passage of time, as a ruler lets us measure the distance between two objects. But unlike distances, time has a direction, pointing from past to future. From Eternity to Here examines this arrow of time, which is deeply ingrained in the universe around us. The early universe -- the hot, dense, Big Bang -- was very different from the late universe -- cool, empty, expanding space -- and that difference is felt in all the workings of Nature, from the melting of ice cubes to the evolution of species.

The arrow of time is easy to perceive, much harder to understand. Physicists appeal to the idea of entropy, the disorderliness of a system, which tends to increase according to the celebrated Second Law of Thermodynamics. But why was entropy ever small in the first place? That's a question that has been tackled by thinkers such as Ludwig Boltzmann, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Roger Penrose, and Alan Guth, all the way back to Lucretius in ancient Rome. But the answer remains elusive.

The only way to understand the origin of entropy is to understand the origin of the universe -- by asking what happened at the Big Bang, and even before.

Biography: Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1993, and worked at MIT, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago before moving to Caltech. His research involves theoretical physics and astrophysics, focusing on issues in cosmology, field theory, and gravitation. He is the author of Spacetime and Geometry, a graduate-level textbook on general relativity; has produced a set of introductory lectures for The Teaching Company entitled Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe; and blogs regularly at Cosmic Variance. His lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette.

Speaker: Professor Tony Thomas, Australian Laureate Fellow and Elder Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide

Title: "Modern Subatomic Physics: From the Big Bang to the Dark Side of the Universe "

Venue, Time & Date: Union Hall, 6:30pm Thursday 10th December 2009

Abstract: Modern subatomic physics has achieved enormous success with a beautiful underlying theoretical framework, built upon the fundamental symmetries of Nature. Where calculations are possible, this framework describes the most fundamental aspects of our Universe, revealed at the world's major accelerator laboratories. And outstanding challenges remain. Are there completely new groups of particles as suggested by supersymmetry? What is the nature of astrophysical dark matter? What are the fundamental particles of Nature and how do they compose the world in which we live? I will describe some of the outstanding progress made in answering these questions, with an emphasis on phenomena where precise experiments, supercomputing and cross-disciplinary research have recently yielded new insights.

Biography: Anthony (Tony) Thomas was born in Adelaide and attended Adelaide Boys High School. After obtaining a PhD at Flinders University (where he was awarded the University Medal in 1971), Tony took a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and later a position in the Theory Group including time spent in the Theory Division of CERN. While there he served a term on the Proton Synchrotron and Synchro-Cyclotron Committee. He was the sixth person to be appointed Elder Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide, a position first held in 1886 by Sir William Bragg. He served as President of the Australian Institute of Physics, and has held an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellowship and an ARC Special Investigator Award. In 1997 Tony helped establish the Australian Research Council Special Research Centre for the Subatomic Structure of Matter (CSSM). The CSSM is widely recognised as one of the world's major centres for research in theoretical subatomic physics and details of its staff, its workshops, visitor program, publications and other activities may be found on the Centre's web pages.

Podcasts

"Cracking the Einstein Code - Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics" presented by Professor Fulvio Melia, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Arizona and Associate Editor of the Astrophysical Journal Letters

By unmasking the history behind the search for a real world solution to Einstein’s field equations, Melia offers a firsthand account of an important but untold story. Sometimes dramatic, often exhilarating, but always attuned to the human element, Cracking the Einstein Code is ultimately a showcase of how important science gets done.

Download the podcast from the Faculty of Sciences blog.

"The Arrow of Time", presented by Professor Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology

The arrow of time is easy to perceive, much harder to understand. Physicists appeal to the idea of entropy, the disorderliness of a system, which tends to increase according to the celebrated Second Law of Thermodynamics. But why was entropy ever small in the first place? That's a question that has been tackled by thinkers such as Ludwig Boltzmann, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Roger Penrose, and Alan Guth, all the way back to Lucretius in ancient Rome.,,,,, but the answer remains elusive.

Download the podcast from the Faculty of Sciences blog.

"Modern Subatomic Physics: From the Big Bang to the Dark Side of the Universe " presented by Professor Tony Thomas, Australian Laureate Fellow and Elder Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide

Thomas describes some of the outstanding progress made in answering questions about astrophysical dark matter and the fundamental particles of Nature, with an emphasis on phenomena where precise experiments, supercomputing and cross-disciplinary research have recently yielded new insights.

Download the podcast from the Faculty of Sciences blog.