by Mark Wyman
Every Saturday morning beginning October 1, through December 10, 2011;
lectures start at 11:00 a.m. (No lectures on November 26th [Thanksgiving] and December 3rd [
Physics With a Bang]).
Kersten Physics Teaching Center
5720 S. Ellis Avenue, Room 106
Chicago, IL 60637
We will hear the tale of the Cosmos, beginning with the epoch before the
Big Bang and concluding with extrapolations into the far future.
We will begin with the first fourteen billion years of cosmological history,
explaining how theorists and observers have worked together to establish a consensus model for cosmology.
We can now account for most of what we see in the cosmos with just six numbers. But, cosmology is not yet finished:
our inability to connect this model to fundamental physics is leading us into crisis. In the second half of the series,
we'll learn about these crises of contemporary cosmology -- and hear some speculations about how they might be resolved.
History will look back on these years as the golden age of cosmology. Cosmological observations have never been better.
Theory has rarely been more confused. Dr. Wyman will provide a glimpse into the minds of today's cosmologists:
towards what they are bending their thoughts and what kinds of radical breakthroughs they hope to discover.