David Gross, Nobel Prize recipient and lecturer
David Gross, Nobel Prize recipient is scheduled to give a free, public lecture titled "The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics" beginning at 8 p.m. at Jefferson Lab on (Monday) June 12.
He is one of three men – Frank Wilczek, H. David Politzer and Gross – to have their work recognized with the Nobel Prize in physics in 2004 for discovering and recognizing an important property of one of Nature’s fundamental forces – the strong force. Their discovery of "asymptotic freedom" explained previously perplexing experimental results from particle colliders. This vital discovery is aiding scientists in determining how aspects of the strong force work to hold quarks together.
During his talk, Gross will review the present state of knowledge in elementary particle physics and the questions currently being addressed. He will discuss the experimental revolutions that might occur at the Large Hadron Collider under construction in Switzerland at CERN and the proposed International Linear Collider. He will also review the state of string theory, an attempt to construct a unified theory of all the forces of nature, and describe the conceptual revolutions that might be necessary to complete this task. (String Theory was a topic of a recent NOVA program.)
The presentation begins at 8 p.m. in Jefferson Lab’s CEBAF Center auditorium, located at 12,000 Jefferson Ave., Newport News. The program is free and open to anyone interested in learning more about science. It will last about one hour and include a question and answer period at the end. Enter at Jefferson Lab’s main entrance (Onnes Dr.). Everyone over 16 is asked to carry a photo ID and security guards may perform ID, bookbag and purse and vehicle checks. Seating for this event will start at 7:30 p.m. and be on a first-come, first-served basis. For directions, visit http://education.jlab.org/scienceseries/map.html, or call 269-5102 for more information.