Our Expanding Universe: Public talk by Nobel Laureate Prof. James Peebles
Anna McPherson Public Lecture 2022
A prize public talk by Prof. James Peebles (Nobel Laureate in Physics 2019), from Princeton University.
Doors open at 7pm ET, talk starts at 7:30pm ET.
Location: Leacock Building, Room 132, Ï㽶ÊÓƵ (855 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7).
* Open to everyone, no prior knowledge of physics required!
Title: Our Expanding Universe
Summary: The evidence is that our universe is expanding from a hot dense state. So what does this expansion mean? what is the evidence? and how can we be so sure of it? I will offer answers to these questions and a related one. If the evidence is so good why can't we identify the dark matter that is central to our theory of the expanding universe? I will argue that the expanding universe theory is well and convincingly established, but all our science has open questions that require work; dark matter is an example. This is the excitement of scientific research.
**The annual Anna I. McPherson Lectures series in Physics were established in honour of Anna Isobel McPherson, a member of the McGill Physics Faculty from 1940 until her death in 1979. Over her long association with the Department of Physics, Anna McPherson made important contributions in teaching, research, and counselling, helping and teaching a very large number of students. The McPherson lecture series was established to acknowledge her outstanding generosity and her many valued academic contributions. The mandate of these lectures is to bring a distinguished physicist to McGill each year to give two lectures, one of which is a lecture for the general public.**