By Raven Hanna
Is the Universe a fireball or a fractal? Are the rules the
same here as they are millions of light years from here? How did the
Universe start? How will it end? Will it end? Is the Universe part of a
Multiverse?
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Andrei Linde (Photo Courtesy of Andre
Linde) |
These are some of the big questions Andrei Linde
(Stanford) will discuss in a free public lecture, entitled The Origin and
the Fate of the Universe, at Stanford’s Kresge Auditorium beginning at
8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 15.
The lecture is part of the 22nd Annual Texas Symposium on
Relativistic Astrophysics (see Texas, page 1). This is an international
conference that features recent developments in cosmology and high energy
astrophysics.
Linde is one of the originators of inflationary cosmology
theories, which replace the one fireball of the Big Bang with a fireball
fractal. This idea that many inflating balls continually form new balls
leads to the possibility that the Universe as a whole is immortal, even
though each of its parts may eventually collapse and disappear. It also
suggests that the basic rules of matter and energy may not be constant
throughout the universe.
While Linde is one of the premiere intellectual and
creative minds in physics, his talk will be geared toward a general
audience. He will discuss eternal inflation, string theory and the theory
of dark energy in relation to recent cosmological observations.
Linde received his Ph.D. in 1975 from the Lebedev Physical
Institute in Moscow. He joined the Physics Department at Stanford in 1990.
He has authored 200 papers on particle physics, phase transitions and
cosmology, two books on inflationary cosmology, and is the recipient of
numerous awards.
For more information on Andrei Linde, see:
http://www.stanford.edu/~alinde/
