[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Rees.Martin_and_Phillips.Bi.jpg” caption=”Martin Rees, Bill Phillips”]Two distinguished scientists are at McMaster this week to share their knowledge of the universe and lasers.

Sir Martin Rees, one of the most distinguished astrophysicists of our time, will talk about Life in Our Universe and Others, today (Monday, Oct. 20) at 8 p.m. in Togo Salmon Hall, Room 120. His talk will examine such questions as: Is there life — even intelligence — beyond the Earth? How can we best look for it? What is life's long-term future, here on Earth and perhaps far beyond? Could there even be other big bangs?

Rees is a professor of astronomy and cosmology at the University of Cambridge and Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom. From 1973 until 1991, he was the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. He served for 10 years as director of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy and was president of the Royal Astronomical Society (1992-94).

His many awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Heineman Prize for Astrophysics of the American Astronomical Society, the Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation and the Einstein Award of the World Cultural Council.
He is the author or co-author of nearly 500 research papers, mainly on astrophysics and cosmology, as well as seven books, including five for general readership.

His main current research interests are in high-energy astrophysics and cosmic structure formation – especially in the formation of the first stars and galaxies that formed at the end of the cosmic 'dark age'.

Nobel prize winner and renowned physicist Bill Phillips will give a talk on campus on Tuesday, Oct. 21 entitled Almost Absolute Zero: The Story of Laser Cooling and Trapping. The talk takes place at 7:30 p.m. in University Hall, Convocation Hall.

Phillips' lecture is an updated version of the Nobel lecture he gave in Stockholm in 1997 when he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.” His talk is aimed at a general audience of non-scientists, but discusses some of the newest and most exciting developments in physics.

Phillips' lecture will describe how laser cooling works, and why it works better than anyone had expected it to. Scientists can now cool a gas of atoms to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero–the coldest temperatures in the universe. Atoms this cold
exhibit weird and wonderful properties and are being used for applications ranging from super-accurate atomic clocks to new quantum devices like atom lasers.

Phillips is a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fellow, leader of the laser cooling and trapping group in the atomic physics division of NIST's physics laboratory and is an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of the Gold Medal of the U. S. Department of Commerce (1993), the Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1996) and the Schawlow Prize of the American Physical Society (1998).

Photo caption: Sir Martin Rees, top, and Bill Phillips, will speak at McMaster this week.