Public Lectures

Apart from Einstein, Paul Dirac was probably the greatest theoretical physicist of the twentieth century. Dirac, co-inventor of the most revolutionary theory for 150 years 'quantum mechanics' is now best known for conceiving of anti-matter in his head and also for his deeply eccentric behaviour. For him, the most important attribute of a fundamental theory was its mathematical beauty, an idea that he said was 'almost a religion' to him. In this talk, Farmelo will argue that this obsession originated in his early life and training as an engineer and mathematician. An examination of Dirac's character will show why he was sometimes called 'the strangest man' in the modern history of physics.

With a background in computer and systems engineering as well as language processing and automatic speech recognition, Ms. Payette was selected from a pool of 5,330 candidates to become a Canadian astronaut, focusing on technical issues in robotics. Today, following her amazing professional career and numerous life experiences, Ms. Payette is veteran of two missions to the International Space Station as a crew member and Flight Engineer. She also holds a commercial pilot license; earned military pilot captaincy on the 'Snowbird' jets; is a certified deep-sea diving suit operator; is fluent in French and English, and can converse in Spanish, Italian, Russian and German. She has received many awards, holds numerous degrees and, on a personal note, plays the piano and has sung with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Piacere Vocale in Basel, Switzerland, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto. Drawing from her many firsthand experiences and zest for life, Ms. Payette will share an astronaut's high level perspective on extraordinarily complex, yet highly collaborative, challenges in space - from both a research and international diplomacy policy point of view.

The world's most ambitious scientific experiment is buried 100 meters underground, straddling Switzerland and France. A billion times every minute, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) slams together protons, while four giant detectors watch closely. - So how does the Large Hadron Collider work? - Why can slamming tiny particles into each other provide clues about the nature of all space and time? - What mysteries are physicists trying to solve with data from the LHC? - How does the cutting edge of particle physics relate to the world around us, from the patterns of stars in the sky to the fact that they shine at all? Natalia Toro, PI Faculty, works at the intersection of theories and hard data. She will explain how complex collision data from the LHC is being digested and examined right now, and how it may set the course for the science of the future.

Learn about the future of “3D Printers” – machines that will fabricate arbitrary-shaped parts, layer by layer. Dr. Lipson will share a history of these technologies and preview a future in which we continue to gain unprecedented control over physical matter. If humans distinguish themselves from their evolutionary ancestors by making tools, then how might the ultimate tools – involving additive manufacturing – impact human culture forever? Dr. Lipson explores the science, technology and potential of programmable matter.

Some numbers mean things, and some numbers do things. Making--and breaking--that distinction was central to renowned mathematician John von Neumann’s implementation of Alan Turing’s Universal Machine in 1945-56. In this lecture, you will learn about the unlikeliest place on earth to build such a device and how this vital 5-kilobyte step in the digital revolution was sparked by a collision of ideas between mathematicians and engineers. Combining soldering guns with science, Von Neumann and his Electronic Computing Instrument tackled previously intractable problems ranging from thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather forecasting to cellular automata, network optimization, and the origins of life. In this highly visual and informative presentation, George Dyson will impart the full story - from the people to their processors - and where our digital directions through history may lead us next.

Space and time are two of the universe's most fundamental elements. Relativity combines these two into the unified notion of space-time, but twistor theory goes beyond this replacing both by something entirely different, where the basic elements are the paths taken by particles of light or other particles without mass. Twistor theory has already found powerful applications in the field of high-energy physics. The creation of twistor theory was motivated with the hope that it would shed light on the foundations of quantum physics, a theory that puzzled even Einstein, particularly through the weird effects of quantum non-locality—the phenomenon whereby the behaviour of quantum particles can seem to have instantaneous effects over large distances. In this lecture, Prof. Penrose will describe a deep link between twistor theory and the simplest form of quantum non-locality and how the connection may be generalized in ways that provide a broader understanding of the phenomenon.

Did you know you could fit the entire human race in the volume of a sugar cube? Or that, if the Sun were made of bananas, it wouldn't make much difference? Or that 98 per cent of the Universe is invisible? Award-winning science writer Marcus Chown invites you to come along and discover how the Universe we live in is far stranger than anything we could possibly have invented.

For thousands of years people have wondered, "Are we alone?" Out of the 500 planets so far known to orbit nearby stars, about 100 transit their host stars, that is, the planet goes in front of its star as seen from Earth. The transiting planets are "goldmines" for astronomers, because the planetary sizes, masses, and atmospheres can be routinely measured. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope is further revolutionizing transiting exoplanet studies with its unprecedented photometric precision. Dr. Seager will share her unique insights as a member of the Kepler Science Team including a discussion of recent Kepler announcements. She will also share information on the pioneering technology development that will fuel the search for life on other worlds.

Time is of philosophical interest as well as the subject of mathematical and scientific research. Even though it is a concept familiar to most, the passage of time remains one of the greatest enigmas of the universe. The philosopher Augustine once said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know." The concept time indeed cannot be explained in simple terms. Emotions, life, and death - all are related to our interpretation of the irreversible flow of time. After a discussion of the concept of time, Prof. Mazur will review historical attempts to "stop time", that is, to capture events of very short duration and then present an overview of current research into ultrafast processes using short laser pulses.