ISSYP 2009

The complete story of how the scientists’ had predicted the final stages of stars of varying masses: from the application of General Relatively, to the latest astronomical observations. Our journey starts with White Dwarfs and ends with a journey to and into a Black Hole and all the implications such a trip would hold for our visitor.

Information has always been valuable, never more so than in recent decades, and throughout history people have turned to cryptography in an attempt to keep important information secret. New technologies are now emerging based on the counterintuitive laws of quantum physics that govern the atomic scale. These technologies threaten cryptographic methods which are in widespread use today, but offer new quantum cryptographic protocols which could profoundly alter the world of cryptography.

The refinement of our understanding of Space and Time through thought experiments; starting with Newtonian ideas and ending with the mathematical adventures of Einstein and other prominent scientists as they contemplate the structure of stars.

The reason cosmologists have a job is that the Universe as a whole -- the stuff between planets and stars and galaxies -- is, despite first appearances, a pretty interesting place. The strangest fact about it is that it's expanding, and always has been, as far as we know (and though Einstein's theory of gravity predicts this, Albert himself didn't much care for the idea, at least at first). After about seventy years -- it was discovered in 1929 -- this expansion was kind of old hat, but then new observations came around that shattered the old complacency. The old idea was that the Universe was expanding, but slowing down as it went -- since gravity, as far as anyone knew, could only cause attractive forces. What the new observations demonstrated is that the Universe's expansion is, in fact, accelerating -- getting faster with time. This is so shocking that most astronomers and cosmologists couldn't believe it at first, and some still don't. In this talk, I'll explain a bit about how we know this, why it's so shocking, and tell you something about the crazy ideas people at Perimeter have for what's going on.

Classical physics of a spinning bar magnet in an external magnetic field:  energy, angular momentum, torque and its effect on angular momentum, and precession.  Application to NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance).  The peculiar physics and mathematics of quantum mechanical spin: quantization of spin and superposition of spin states.  Application of quantum mechanical spin and NMR to quantum computing..

Physics emerged from the twentieth century with two remarkably successful descriptions of nature which stand in striking contrast. Quantum mechanics describes the subatomic realm with intrinsic uncertainties and probabilities. On the other hand, Einstein's general relativity describe gravitational phenomena in an exacting geometric arena. Theoretical physicists have struggled for over fifty years trying to combine these views in a single unified framework. More recently, superstring theory has drawn a huge amount of interest as a leading contender to provide such a unification. Superstring theory is a theory of strings, branes, extra spacetime dimensions and much more. In my lecture, I will try to give a flavour for what superstring theory is all about and why physicists, like myself, continue to be so excited about this, perhaps the final theory.

Dr. Smolin is a faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and author of several books including most recently “The Trouble with Physics”. He is known for devising several different approaches to quantum gravity, in particular, loop quantum gravity. His research interests include cosmology, elementary particle theory, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and theoretical biology. This information Chalk and Talk will explore in special topics in Quantum Gravity.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Feynman sum over paths interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the harmonic oscillator: introduction to tunnelling, QFT (what is a photon?), and zero point energy.