Director, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
University of California at Santa Barbara
Thursday, March 25th 2010, 18:00
Stephen Leacock Building, Leacock Auditorium (room 132)
The Future of Physics
In this talk I discuss 25 questions that might guide physics,from cosmology to
biophysics, over the next 25 years.
Friday, March 26th 2010, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112)
The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics
I review the present state of knowledge in elementary particle physics and
the questions that we are currently addressing. I discuss the experimental
revolutions that might occur at the Large Hadron Collider, soon to be finished
at CERN. I shall also review the state of string theory. The necessity to
go beyond the standard model of particle physics and to understand quantum
gravity has led to this ambitious attempt to unify all the forces of nature
and all forms of matter as different vibrations of a string-like object. But
string theory is still in a pre-revolutionary stage. Although remarkable
progress has been achieved in the last decade we still lack a fundamental
understanding of the theory. Many string theorists suspect that a profound
conceptual change in our concept of space and time will be required for the
final formulation of string theory.
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