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This presentation will introduce the counter-intuitive quantum concept of entanglement and help to explain it via the ‘entanglement game’, a hands-on interactive activity that has been successfully tested with a number of Grade 12 classes. It will also introduce the emerging field of quantum technology within which researchers are harnessing some of the strange features of quantum theory to build new powerful 21st–century technologies such as quantum computers, quantum teleporters and quantum secret codes.

This presentation will introduce the counter-intuitive quantum concept of entanglement and help to explain it via the ‘entanglement game’, a hands-on interactive activity that has been successfully tested with a number of Grade 12 classes. It will also introduce the emerging field of quantum technology within which researchers are harnessing some of the strange features of quantum theory to build new powerful 21st–century technologies such as quantum computers, quantum teleporters and quantum secret codes.

While modern theories lavishly invoke several spatial dimensions within models that seek to unify relativity theory and quantum mechanics, none seems to consider the possibility that a yet-unfamiliar aspect of time may do the work. I introduce the notion of Becoming and then consider its consequences for physical theory. Becoming portrays a possible aspect of time that is "curled" very much like the extra spatial dimensions in superstring theories. Within the resulting picture of spacetime, some fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, thermodynamics and modern cosmology fit in very naturally. The proposed model is not yet a scientific theory as it still lacks a rigorous formalism and experimental predictions, yet it points out an entire family of possible theories that merit serious consideration.

We place bounds on the future lifetime of the universe based on present and future Type Ia supernovae and CMB observations, and explain features in the constraints on the past. We give a review of our work done in the last few years and present mainly our current work using a new Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) code. The resulting constraints exhibit features which have been observed by other groups previously, but which have not been explained so far. Using our new code, we are able to explain them and show that the new first-year data of the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) prefer the cosmological constant, despite the fact that probability distributions for model parameters generically seem to favor dark energy models with non-trivial dynamics. We also calculate the future lifetime of the universe in a model derived from supergravity and discuss the proper interpretation of the results