PASCOS 2001
Eighth International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology.
PASCOS PUBLIC LECTURE, April 11, 2001
8 p.m. MEMORIAL HALL UNC-CHAPEL HILL CAMPUS.
Sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy
"THE DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE"
Paul Steinhardt (Princeton University)
There is more to the Universe than meets the eye - much more. The
ordinary matter that composes our bodies and everything we touch, feel and see
is only a small fraction of the substance of the Universe.
The overwhelming majority consists of exotic
forms of energy that neither
emit nor absorb light and that
interact very weakly with
ordinary matter.
The PASCOS Lecture will discuss recent
discoveries which suggest that the dark side of the Universe
has two different constituents,
one of which dominated in the past and is
responsible for the formation
of galaxies, stars and planets, and a second
component which has recently
overtaken the Universe and will determine our future fate.
Paul Steinhardt
Steinhardt is currently Professor of Physics at Princeton University,
and associate faculty in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences.
He received his B.S. in Physics at Caltech
in 1974; his M.A. in
Physics in 1975 and Ph.D. in
Physics in 1978 at Harvard
University. He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society
of Fellows from 1978-81,
and Mary Awanda Wood Professor
of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania
from 1981-98.
He is a Fellow in the American Physical Society
and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Steinhardt is one of the
developers of the inflationary model
of the universe, a radical
modification of the standard big bang picture
which explains the homogeneity and geometry
of the universe, and the origin of the
fluctuations that seeded the formation
of galaxies and large-scale structure.
He also introduced the concept of "quintessence," a form of dark
energy that may account
for the recently discovered
anomalies in galactic
structure.
Steinhardt is recognized for
inventing the notion of quasicrystals,
a new phase of solid matter with
disallowed crystallographic symmetries,
and for his explorations of their physical properties.
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