SOLD OUT - The Endless Universe Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor of Science Princeton University WEDNESDAY, June 4, 2008 @ 8 p.m.- Tickets $5 Presented in Conjunction with the Fermilab Users Organization

An alternative to the standard big bang model has emerged that challenges conventional ideas about space, time and the evolution of the universe. Known as the "cyclic universe," this theory proposes that space and time had no beginning and that the big bang is actually an event that has repeated at regular intervals punctuating long periods during which new galaxies, stars, planets and life are created. This talk will introduce both the cyclic and standard big bang models and explain how they may be distinguished through experiments being mounted over the next few years. Since the two models present radically different views about the future fate of the universe and the power of science to explain the natural laws that govern it, there is a lot at stake in the outcome.

Paul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics. He is on the faculty of both the Department of Physics and the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He received his B.S. in Physics at Caltech in 1974; his M.A. in Physics in 1975 and Ph.D. in Physics in 1978 at Harvard University. He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1978-81, and Mary Amanda Wood Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989-98, before joining the faculty at Princeton. He hold three patents; is a Fellow in the American Physical Society; and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2002, he shared the P.A.M. Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics with Alan Guth (MIT) and Andrei Linde (Stanford) for laying the foundations of the inflationary theory of the universe. With Neil Turok (Cambridge), he has recently introduced an alternative "cyclic theory." The two models, the subject of this evening's Fermilab lecture, are described by Steinhardt and Turok in a new popular account entitled, ENDLESS UNIVERSE: Beyond the Big Bang.

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