Physicist Alan Guth to Give Talk on Cosmology at Brookhaven Lab, Nov. 6

October 8, 2008

enlarge

Alan Guth, Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Click on the image to download a high-resolution image.)

UPTON, NY — Alan Guth, the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will give a BSA Distinguished Lecture titled "Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse?" at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory on Thursday, November 6, at 7 p.m. in Berkner Hall. BSA Distinguished Lectures are sponsored by Brookhaven Science Associates, the company that manages Brookhaven Lab, to bring topics of general interest before the Laboratory community and the public. The lecture is free and open to the public. Visitors to the Laboratory age 16 and over must bring a photo ID.

In 1981, Guth proposed the theory of the inflationary universe, a modification of the Big Bang theory, which is generally accepted by scientists to explain how the universe began. Nevertheless, the Big Bang theory leaves some questions, and the theory of inflation attempts to answer them. Guth states that a repulsive gravitational force generated by an exotic form of matter brought about the expansion of the universe. He postulates that the universe underwent an expansion of astronomical proportions within the first trillionth of a second of its existence, during which the seeds for its large-scale structure were generated.

Guth and colleagues have further explored the possibility of mimicking inflation in a hypothetical laboratory, thereby creating a new universe, and they concluded that it might be theoretically possible. If it happened, the new universe would not endanger our own universe. Instead, it would slip through a wormhole, a hypothetical space-time travel shortcut, and rapidly disconnect from our universe. In this talk, Guth will explain the inflationary theory and review the features that make it scientifically plausible. In addition, he will discuss the biggest mystery in cosmology: Why is the value of the cosmological constant, sometimes called the "anti-gravity" effect, so remarkably small compared to theoretical expectations? Guth will explain how the inflationary theory, combined with other ideas from elementary particle physics and cosmology, can provide a possible explanation for this discrepancy.

Alan Guth earned his Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1972. He then held postdoctoral positions at Princeton University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In 1980, Guth returned to MIT as an associate professor and rose through the ranks to his current position of professor. He is also a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. Guth was awarded the 1999 MIT School of Science Prize for Undergraduate Teaching, the 2001 Franklin Medal for Physics of the Franklin Institute, the 2002 Dirac Prize of the International Center for Theoretical Physics, and the 2004 Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation. A Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author of The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Perseus Publishing, 1998).

2008-10845  |  INT/EXT  |  Newsroom