Public Lecture Series

For over three hundred years, physicists and mathematicians have been trying to understand how stable the Earth really is. Could gravitational forces from other planets lead to drastic changes in Earth’s orbit? Will we collide with other planets or be ejected into interstellar space? stability, solar systems, Scott Tremaine, Copernicus, Copernican principle, Kepler, Newton, motion, gravity, N-Body, dynamical system, Laplace, round off error, gravitational microlensing, MOSTorbit, chaos

Do you have to see it to believe it? James Robert Brown, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, will discuss the highly interesting but controversial topic of the legitimate role of visual thinking in mathematics and science. Examples of picture proofs and thought experiments will be given. An explanation of how they work will be sketched. Proof, pictures, James Brown, axioms, sketches, experiment, Barwise, Godel, isomorphc homomorphic, intuitions, continuum hypothesis, refutation

Are you ready for this upgrade? The very foundation of computer science is changing. As Moore\'s Law draws to a close, rules of quantum physics are taking over. Learn how leading researchers are using counterintuitive effects, such as superposition, in their quest to build ultra-powerful quantum computers. You\'ll see how quantum particles behave, are controlled and, ultimately, used to calculate. quantum world, Raymond Laflamme, quantum mechanics, quantum information, quantum computing, information processing, Moore\'s Law, quantum scale, complexity theory, cryptography, qubits, quantum bits, quantum states, nuclear magnetic resonance, Turing

Galileo’s campaign on behalf of the modern view of the solar system is one of the most dramatic events in the history of relations between Christianity and science – endlessly portrayed as a battle between theological interests and scientific freedom. But this traditional story is filled with factual errors. And when human fears, rivalries, revenge and the like are taken into account, the story takes on an altogether different cast. In Professor Lindberg’s retelling, the ideological side of the story will be balanced with its richness as a human event. Florentine Heretic, Galileo, church, cosmos, religion, science, theology, geocentric, heliocentric, astronomy

The strange paradoxes and puzzles of the quantum behaviour of black holes and the things that fall into them led to a spirited battle of ideas between Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind and other scientists. Resolving the debate may change our entire understanding of space, time, matter and information – is the entire world, for example, a quantum hologram? black hole, Leonard Susskind, space-time, Einstein, Hawking, complementarity, uncertainty principle, holographic principle, string theory,

Anton Zeilinger, a renowned physicist who successfully teleported light particles, will explain how quantum properties are used today to process and transmit information. Anton Zeilinger, Einstein, quantum information, quantum physics, entanglement, cryptography, quantum mechanics, teleportation, quantum computer