2011 Misel Family Lecture

The William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute is proud to host the 6th Annual Misel Family Lecture. This lecture is free and open to the public. If you have further questions regarding the lecture please contact us at ftpi AT physics.umn.edu. We look forward to seeing you there!

If you missed the lecture you can watch the archived video HERE.

WHERE: McNamara Alumni Center, Memorial Hall
WHEN: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 7:00pm. Refreshments will be served afterward in the McNamara Atrium.

SPEAKER: Roger Blandford, KAVLI, Stanford University, SLAC

Roger Blandford is a native of England and took his BA, MA and PhD degrees at Cambridge University. Following postdoctoral research at Cambridge, Princeton and Berkeley he took up a faculty position at Caltech in 1976 where he was appointed as the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1989. In 2003 He moved to Stanford University to become the first Director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and the Luke Blossom Chair in the School of Humanities and Science. His research interests include black hole astrophysics, cosmology, gravitational lensing, cosmic ray physics and compact stars. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American PhysicalSociety and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. He recently chaired a two year National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics. View the event POSTER and BROCHURE.

TITLE: The Dark Side of the Universe

ABSTRACT: Our understanding of the universe is undergoing a revolution. Astronomical measurements have demonstrated that about 21% of universe is in the form of "dark matter," which gravitationally attracts but is otherwise invisible and most of the remainder (75%) takes the form of "dark energy," which causes space to expand at an ever-increasing rate. This implies that only a small fraction of the universe is matter that we understand! In this presentation, we will explore the evidence for dark matter and dark energy, as well as the experiments being developed to investigate their fundamental nature.

Professor Blandford will also give the Physics and Astronomy Colloquium on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 3:35 p.m. in room 131, Tate Lab