Fall Compton Lectures to highlight black holes, physics theory

Learn how black holes have provided one of the finest triumphs of string theory, a promising theory that emerged in recent years which could unify the two main pillars of 20th-century physics into one theory of everything, in a series of free, public lectures at the University of Chicago beginning Saturday, Oct. 2.

The series of 10 lectures, titled “Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics and String Theory,” will be presented Saturday mornings at 11 a.m. through Dec. 11 in room 106 of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 S. Ellis Ave. There will be no lecture Saturday, Nov. 27, due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Finn Larsen, Robert McCormick Fellow at the University’s Enrico Fermi Institute, will deliver the lectures. Larsen received his doctoral degree in physics from Princeton University in 1996. He also holds a B.A. in physics and mathematics and an M.A. in physics from Denmark’s Aarhus University.

In his lecture series, Larsen will explore various theoretical descriptions of black holes and how their modern understanding begins with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He will further detail how the wonders and enigmas posed by black holes appear in their full glory when scientists also attempt to understand quantum mechanics, the other main pillar of 20th-century physics.

The talks are the 50th series of the Arthur Holly Compton Lectures, sponsored each fall and spring by the Enrico Fermi Institute. Compton was a University of Chicago physicist and a Nobel laureate, best known for demonstrating that light has the characteristics of both a wave and a particle. He also organized the effort to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb and directed the Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago where Enrico Fermi and his colleagues produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942.

The lectures are intended to make science accessible to a general audience and to convey the excitement of new discoveries in the physical sciences. Previous topics have ranged from the smallest fundamental particles to the history of the universe. All of the lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, call (773) 702-7823.