Events Archive

Dec
02
2013
Cosmic rays are microscopic, charged particles that permanently bombard Earth from outer space. 100 years after their discovery their origin is still a mystery. It is also not clear how cosmic rays can obtain energies that are sometimes billion times larger than what can be produced in the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, the LHC, where the Higgs particle was discovered last year. Possible particle accelerators that nature provides are very exotic sites in the universe like exploding stars, massive black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and pulsars. To find out more about these...
Nov
23
2013
To accept Special Relativity we give up Absolute Time. What do we give up to accept Quantum Theory?  After all these years Heisenberg's 1925 discovery paper for Quantum Theory is still opaque, in contrast to  Einstein's for Special Relativity. In hindsight, to accept Quantum Theory we must give up the Classical Principle, which is hardly ever even stated, for the Quantum Principle.  Today this is naturally inferred from a well-known polarization study of Malus in 1805.  Problems  like "spooky...
Nov
18
2013
One of the aims of the annual Astro-GR meetings is to develop and strengthen the links between the astrophysics and relativity communities by highlighting outstanding scientific issues which can only be resolved through collaboration of these groups. In that spirit this workshop will dwell on questions which are intimately related to the formation, growth, and interaction of black holes with their environments, from cosmological scales all the way to the event horizon. - See more at: http://members.aei.mpg.de/amaro-seoane/astro-gr-atlanta/#Rationale...
Nov
15
2013
Sources of single photons (as opposed to sources which produce on average a single photon) are of great current interest for quantum information processing. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not easy to produce a single photon efficiently and in a controlled way. Following earlier progress, recent experimental activity has resulted in the production of single photons by taking advantage of strong inter-particle interactions in cold atomic gases. I will show how the systematic use of the method of steepest descents can be used to understand the dynamics of the single photon source developed here...

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