Public Lectures

Probabilities and randomness arise whenever we're not sure what will happen next. They apply to everything from lottery jackpots to airplane crashes; email spam to insurance policies; medical studies to election polls. This exploration of odds and oddities will explain how a Probability Perspective can shed new light on many familiar situations in our everyday lives, and how computer algorithms which use randomness can be used to address problems in many branches of science.

Jeffrey Rosenthal is a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Toronto and examines odds and statistics in everyday life. His interest in probability theory began at an early age when, as a child, he enjoyed flipping coins, rolling dice and computing probabilities. He followed his passion and earned his BSc in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science from the University of Toronto at the age of 20; his PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University at the age of 24; and tenure in the Department of Statistics at the University of Toronto at the age of 29. He is also a fellow of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics.

Professor Rosenthal has been honoured with a Premier’s Research Excellence Award, the COPSS President’s Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, a Harvard University Teaching Award in 1991, an Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award in 1998 at the University of Toronto and the 2006 CRM-SSC Prize in Statistics. He is author of “Struck by Lightning, The Curious World of Probabilities” and A First Look a Rigorous Probability Theory. He also co-authored “Probability and Statistics: The Science of Uncertainty”.

Despite being born on Friday the thirteenth, Rosenthal considers himself a very fortunate person.

""It is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable."" - Rene Descartes (1596-1650), French philosopher and mathematician

The evidence that the universe emerged 14 billion years ago from an event called \'the big bang\' is overwhelming. Yet the cause of this event remains deeply mysterious. In the conventional picture, the \'initial singularity\' is unexplained. It is simply assumed that the universe somehow sprang into existence full of \'inflationary\' energy, blowing up the universe into the large, smooth state we observe today. While this picture is in excellent agreement with current observations, it is both contrived and incomplete, leading us to suspect that it is not the final word. In this lecture, the standard inflationary picture will be contrasted with a new view of the initial singularity suggested by string and M-theory, in which the bang is a far more normal, albeit violent, event which occurred in a pre-existing universe. According to the new picture, a cyclical model of the universe becomes feasible in which one bang is followed by another, in a potentially endless series of cosmic cycles. The presentation will also review exciting recent theoretical developments and forthcoming observational tests which could distinguish between the rival inflationary and cyclical hypotheses. big bang, cosmology, universe, initial singularity, inflation, string theory, M-theory, pre-existing universe, cyclical model, cosmic cycle, particle physics, dark matter, dark energy

In the \'second space age\', human spaceflight is no longer the domain of governments. Dream-chasing entrepreneurs and clever engineers are aggressively blazing new trails into the heavens and preparing the world for an era of space tourism, ultra fast point-to-point earth travel and even orbiting hotels. Having gained inside access into the top private space programs, science journalist Michael Belfiore will share his many insights on the history-making flights, the failures and fatalities, as well as the enduring passion and dreams of the real estate tycoons, dot-com billionaires, a video game programmer and other business mavericks for whom the sky is no longer the limit. They are fueling the highest-flying private rockets ever built, testing \"vertical dragsters\", and preparing to launch an inflatable space station - with the mock-up already in earth orbit. Can your ticket to ride be that far behind? space travel, human spaceflight, second space age, private space program, space tourism, orbiting hotel, entrepeneur, engineer, Rocketeers

Do ideas about information and reality inspire fruitful new approaches to the hardest problems of modern physics? What can we learn about the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the beginning of the universe and our understanding of black holes by thinking about the very essence of information? The answers to these questions are surprising and enlightening, but also controversial. The topic of information within physics has involved some of the 20th century\'s greatest scientists in long-running intellectual battles that continue to the present day. In this special debate, hosted by the CBC\'s Bob McDonald of \'Quirks and Quarks\', you will enjoy a lively discussion between four prominent physicists who have thought long and hard about these questions. information, quantum mechanics, quantum cryptology, entropy, everything computes, properties equals information, uncertainty principle, quantum computer, hologram, black hole, event horizon, coherence, Schrodinger, interference and predictability, quantum state, teleportation, entanglement

"International researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in Geneva, Switzerland, will soon embark on one of science's greatest adventures. With its very high energy, previously seen only in cosmic rays, the particle collider will probe the inner structure of matter at distances ten times smaller than any previous experiments. The LHC will address many of the mysteries surrounding the smallest particles of matter. It may also pierce secrets that the Universe has hidden since the early stages of the Big Bang, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of matter itself. This will be the largest scientific experiment ever attempted and the complex international efforts to bring the 27km-long machine to life, including Canada’s involvement, will also be explained."

About John EllisBorn in London on July 1st, 1946, Ellis grew up in Potters Bar, a suburb that some Londoners used to regard as the northern boundary of civilization. It was there, at around the age of 12, he decided to become a physicist – largely due to the interesting science books he read at the local library. Ellis obtained his BA and PHD from Cambridge University where he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Following a year at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and an additional year at the California Institute of Technology as a research associate, Ellis joined CERN in 1973 and became leader of the Theory Division for six years. Currently, he is a senior staff member. Ellis is also an advisor on CERN’s relations with non-Member States.Ellis has published over 700 scientific articles in particle physics and related areas of cosmology and astrophysics. His research interests include the possible experimental consequences and tests of new theoretical ideas such as gauge theories of strong and electroweak interactions, grand unified theories, supersymmetry, and string theory. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985, and was awarded the Dirac Medal of the Institute of Physics in 2005. Ellis is also responsible for popularizing the term “Theory of Everything” in an article published in the journal Nature in 1986.

About Robert S. OrrProfessor Orr was born in Iran, and grew up in Scotland and South Wales. His father and uncles were all engineers in the ship building industry. His interest in physics was sparked early in his childhood by trying to make sense of his father’s textbooks. “Ever since I was a child, I took things apart to see how they worked” says Orr. “Doing that with matter is the ultimate challenge."

At present he is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto. He was NSERC Principal Investigator for ATLAS Canada from 1994 to 2007. ATLAS is a detector within the LHC at CERN. Orr earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. at Imperial College, University of London, UK, and was a Post Doctoral Researcher at Rutherford Laboratory, also in the UK, as well as at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. From 1974 to 1981 he was a CERN Fellow and Staff Physicist. He came to Canada in 1981 as an Institute of Particle Physics Research Scientist, and became a member of the faculty at the University of Toronto in 1989. Orr has worked at many of the world’s particle physics labs in the USA, Germany and Japan. He has a particular interest in the application of large scale computing clusters in this field, and in the development of new finds of detection devices.

Many experts are convinced that large scale, practical implementations of quantum information systems hold great promise for society, much as the laser and the transistor have already revolutionized the world. This stems from a long history of research that included an intense, raging battle of epic proportions between scientific giants. In tracing these steps, you will learn why Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr argued over the nature of entangled states where pairs of sub-atomic particles are strangely correlated from 1935 until their very deaths. You will also find out how, decades later, John Bell discovered his famous inequalities that made it possible for experimentalists, including Alain Aspect and others, to settle the great debate and help propel a new era of fundamental understanding with concepts and methods that seek to harness unique properties of atoms to process and transmit information.

Sixty-five million years ago dinosaurs ruled the warm Cretaceous Earth. Without warning, this world was swept away forever by the impact of an asteroid about 15 km in diameter, leaving a huge scar now called the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, Mexico. This catastrophe set the stage for the ascendance of our own biological group, the mammals. Although the fact of this impact is now established beyond doubt, the precise means by which an impact could wipe out such a large fraction of the Earth\'s inhabitants is not fully understood. Recent study of the physical consequences of a large impact on the Earth have revealed a plethora of potentially disastrous effects, ranging from an immediate firestorm that ignited global wildfires to sulfuric acid aerosols, acid rain, and ozone depletion lasting decades. The extinctions caused by these physical traumas changed the way that the Earth\'s biosphere recycles carbon, leading to climatic changes lasting nearly a million years longer. Although no other major extinction in the past 500 million years can yet be tied unambiguously to an extraterrestrial impact, there is geological evidence of even larger impacts farther back in Earth\'s history, including the one that created the Sudbury ore body in Ontario more than a billion years ago. Concerns over the future possibility of such large impacts have led to a worldwide program to identify potentially threatening asteroids and has generated discussion of what humans might do to deflect such an asteroid if it is found. death of dinosaurs, mass extinction, extinction, dinosaurs, asteroid impact, asteroid impact effects, Jay Melosh, Cretaceous period, Chicxulub crater, 65 million years ago, large impacts, dinosaur, giant impacts, Walter Alverez, thin layer of red clay, Jan Smit, KT boundary, iridium layer, spherules, microtektites, geology, Geologic history, distal ejecta, Apophis, large extraterrestrial bodies, plate tectonics, Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, twinning, Yucatan, Gulf of Mexico, fern, shocked quartz, soot, ozone depletion, acid rain, two-layer, thermal radiation, depletion of CO2

Sensitive information can be valuable to others - from your personal credit card numbers to state and military secrets. Throughout history, sophisticated codes have been developed in an attempt to keep important data from prying eyes. But now, new technologies are emerging based on the surprising laws of quantum physics that govern the atomic scale. These powerful techniques threaten to crack some secret codes in widespread use today and, at the same time, offer new quantum cryptographic protocols which could one day profoundly alter the way we safeguard critical information. Quantum cryptography, quantum physics, Daniel Gottesman, cryptography, one-time pad, RSA, encryption, public key, decryption, private key, quantum computer, qubit, shor\'s algorithm, quantum key distribution, QKD

Hollywood movies about aliens abound, but do they really exist? The real scientific search for evidence of life, and particularly intelligent life, elsewhere in the cosmos is just as exciting as the “reel” version, and a lot more logical. So far, there is ‘life-as-we-know-it’ to guide our speculations and observations. But a new appreciation for the tenacity of life, a growing respect for the world of microbes, and new search technologies involving observatories and spacecraft are rapidly expanding our viewpoint. Many expect surprises. SETI is at the forefront of this research and has plans to extend its range out even further into the galaxy, looking for evidence of someone else’s technology. In the next few decades, scientists will take a much closer look at places within our solar system where liquid water (even vast oceans) may exist and harbor life. They will also probe the closest stars to see if other ‘Earths’ and biospheres exist. Dr. Jill Tarter will describe research in a discipline some call “the archaeology of the future”. Jill Tarter, extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI, \'archaeology of the future\', stardust, microbes, extreme life conditions, astrobiology, Kepler probe, Corot probe

Will big questions be answered when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switches on in 2007? What will scientists find? Where might the research lead? Nima Arkani-Hamed, a noted particle theorist, is a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He investigates a number of mysteries and interactions in nature – puzzles that are likely to have experimental consequences in the next few years via particle accelerators, like the LHC, as well as cosmological observations. fundamental physics, Nima Arkani-Hamed, \'Future of Fundamental Physics\', general relativity, quantum mechanics, Large Hadrom Collider, L H C, quark, quantum gravity, string theory, special relativity, standard model, Planck scale, space-time, vacuum, Higgs boson, super symmetry

Using results from models of the atmosphere/ocean/sediment carbon cycle, the impacts of fossil-fuel CO2 release will be examined – including the effect on climate many thousands of years into the future, rather than for just a few centuries as commonly claimed. Prof. Archer will explain how aspects of the Earth system, such as the growth or melting of the great ice sheets, the thawing of permafrost, and the release of methane from the methane hydrate deposits in the deep ocean, take thousands of years to respond to a change in climate. The duration of our potential climate adventure is comparable to the pacing of climate changes in the past, which enables us to use the geologic record of past climate changes to predict the trajectory of global warming into the deep future. In particular, the record of sea level variations in the past suggests that the ultimate sea level response to fossil fuel CO2 use could be 10 to 100 times higher than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast for the year 2100. models, greenhouse gas, temperature forecast, medieval warm, little ice age, Greenland, Heinrich Events, fossil fuel, Climber Model Hysteresis, Ganopolski, Buffett, methane hydrates, Palaeocene, Eocene, Thermal Maximum Event

Newton\'s first law of motion - and the very meaning of inertia - has been described as either completely obvious (D\'Alembert) or a \'logician\'s nightmare\' (ex-editor of the American Journal of Physics). Sometimes the simplest things in physics are the most subtle. The first law will be described in historical context, explaining a connection with the ancient Greeks’ distinction between natural and violent motion and with Descartes\' natural philosophy. You will also learn why it still requires careful handling and what it tells us about time in physics. \'Time and Motion\', Harvey Brown, time, motion, relative, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Galileo, Copernicanism, Descartes, inertia, Newton, standard of time, Fitzgerald, duration, inertial frame