archive-1: SETI [ASTRO] World's Leading Cosmologists To Assess Promising
SETI [ASTRO] World's Leading Cosmologists To Assess Promising
Larry Klaes ( lklaes@bbn.com )
Thu, 21 Jan 1999 13:43:00 -0500
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>Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 22:16:52 GMT
>From: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
>To: astro@lists.mindspring.com
>Subject: [ASTRO] World's Leading Cosmologists To Assess Promising Theory
Of Universe
>Sender: owner-astro@brickbat12.mindspring.com
>Reply-To: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
>
>
>University of Chicago News Office
>5801 South Ellis Avenue - Room 200
>Chicago, Illinois 60637-1473
>(773) 702-8360 Fax: (773) 702-8324
>http://www-news.uchicago.edu/
>
>Contact: Steve Koppes, (773) 702-8366, s-koppes@uchicago.edu
>
>For Immediate Release: January 18, 1999
>
>World's leading cosmologists to assess promising theory of universe
>at Pritzker Symposium Jan. 29 to Feb. 3 at University of Chicago
>
>Inflation is bad for the economy, but it works wonders for the
>universe.
>
>The inflation theory proposes that the universe expanded extremely
>rapidly soon after the big bang and effectively explains a number of
>important questions that the big bang theory alone as been unable to
>answer.
>
>Inflation theory also meshes particle physics with astrophysics,
>inner space with outer space, said Michael Turner, symposium
>co-chair and Chairman of the University of Chicago's Astronomy &
>Astrophysics Department. "It holds that the largest structures in
>the universe, from galaxies to great walls made of galaxies,
>originated as quantum fluctuations on the subatomic scale."
>
>Fourteen of the world's top experts in cosmology, including Stephen
>Hawking, will gather Jan. 29 to Feb. 3 for the Pritzker Symposium on
>the Status of Inflationary Cosmology at the University of Chicago to
>debate how well inflationary theory holds up against new
>observations.
>
>The symposium, along with the opening of the new Pritzker Gallery of
>Cosmology at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, marks the
>official beginning of the city of Chicago's Project Millennium, a
>yearlong program to celebrate and reflect upon the millennium. The
>symposium, the largest meeting ever devoted to inflationary
>cosmology, is sponsored by the University, Fermi National
>Accelerator Laboratory and the Adler Planetarium.
>
>"Nicholas Pritzker, an avid cosmologist, approached the Adler
>Planetarium about a gallery that would trace our understanding of
>the universe from Copernicus to inflation," said Evalyn Gates,
>director of astronomy at Adler Planetarium. "As a result, the Adler
>created a gallery that even includes pages from the notebook of Alan
>Guth, one of the inventors of inflation."
>
>The inflation theory has been around for more than 15 years, but
>only in the past few years have astronomers collected the first
>observational data in its support, said symposium co-chair Rocky
>Kolb, University of Chicago Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
>
>Inflation predicts a pattern of temperature differences in the
>cosmic microwave background radiation, the big bang's afterglow.
>According to the theory, some regions of the sky should have
>slightly higher temperatures than others, and some should have
>slightly lower temperatures.
>
>Measurements made by University of Chicago scientists and others are
>beginning to bear out these predictions, Kolb said.
>
>Inflation also predicts that the total amount of matter and energy
>in the universe adds up to the critical density, which would mean
>the universe is flat like a piece of paper instead of curved like a
>sphere.
>
>"Just this year, we have the first evidence that this is true, and
>amazingly, that 60 percent of the critical density is in the form of
>a mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion of the
>universe to speed up rather than slow down," Turner said. "We are
>excited to have at long last found the Œmissing energy' that brings
>the total to the critical density. Now we have to figure out what it
>is!"
>
>Astronomers are expecting to receive an avalanche of high-quality
>data during the coming years that will help them to confirm or
>refute inflation theory and possibly begin to probe the earliest
>moments of creation, said symposium co-chair Josh Frieman, Fermilab
>Scientist and Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Chicago.
>
>Crucial to testing inflation is the study of millionth-of-a-degree
>variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background in
>different directions. Some of the data will come from ongoing
>experiments on the microwave background radiation conducted at the
>University's Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica and
>from balloon experiments at the South Pole involving Chicago
>scientists.
>
>Further data will come from two satellites: the Microwave Anisotropy
>Probe that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will
>launch in 2000, again with Chicago's involvement, and the Planck
>Surveyor, which the European Space Agency will launch in 2007.
>
>The Sloan Digital Sky Survey also will be important in tying down
>the validity of inflation, according to Kolb. The survey is an
>international collaboration of scientists and engineers, including
>Frieman and others at the University, Fermilab and several other
>universities and laboratories in the United States and Japan, to
>catalog the positions and brightnesses of more than 100 million
>galaxies. The survey's objective is to map one quarter of the sky
>and create a systematic, three-dimensional picture of the universe
>100 times larger than what was previously available.
>
>The NASA and European satellites, on the other hand, will study the
>large-scale structure of the universe but at a much earlier and
>simpler time. The cosmic microwave background is, in effect, a
>snapshot of the universe when it was 300,000 years old, long before
>stars and galaxies existed.
>
>"We're hoping in the next few years that these two different maps
>will complement one another and provide a consistent picture for the
>large-scale distribution of mass in the universe, and tell us about
>what conditions were like in the very early universe, thereby
>testing inflation," Frieman said.
>
>"Inflation predicts certain patterns of fluctuations in the density
>of the universe, and that should be imprinted both in the microwave
>background about 100,000 years after the big bang and also in the
>large-scale distribution of galaxies, which was laid down more
>recently."
>
>The symposium is scheduled for Jan. 29 to 31 and will consist of
>talks by 14 of the most distinguished cosmologists in the world,
>summarizing the current status of inflation theory.
>
>Among the astronomers making presentations at the symposium will be
>the three men who developed the inflation theory: Alan Guth,
>Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Andrei Linde, Stanford
>University; and Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University. Also
>presenting will be two scientists who made fundamental contributions
>to big bang theory: Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University and
>P.J.E. Peebles of Princeton University. Another presenter will be
>Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of
>Mathematics, a position once held by Isaac Newton.
>
>Hawking will give a public lecture in addition to his scientific
>presentation to symposium participants. The public lecture, "The
>Universe in a Nutshell," will begin at 8 p.m. Jan. 29 in the Arie
>Crown Theater at McCormick Place. The lecture is sponsored by the
>Adler Planetarium and the Pritzker Foundation. For ticket
>information call (312) 559-1212. The public also is invited to visit
>the newly opened Pritzker Gallery at the Adler Planetarium. For
>information, call (312) 322-0304.
>
>Following the symposium will be a workshop Feb. 1 to 3 that will be
>attended by more than 200 experts from around the world.
>
>"I tell my undergraduates at Chicago that every educated person
>should have some idea of the origin, age and size of the universe,"
>Kolb said. "We all live in the universe. It's not just a matter of
>study for the experts who are coming to this meeting or the few
>hundred people in the world who call themselves cosmologists. I tell
>the students, 'It's your universe, too.'"
>
>Editor's Note: Journalists are invited to attend the Pritzker
>Symposium and Workshop, which will be held in the Max Palevsky
>Auditorium in Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St., on the University of
>Chicago campus. To register please contact Steve Koppes at (773)
>703-8366. Further information is available at:
>http://www-astro-theory.fnal.gov/Personal/psw/
>
>
>
>
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