Public Lectures

DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ATTEND LECTURES BY TWO OF THE WORLD’S MOST EMINENT SCIENTISTS!

BOOKING DETAILS

Two Public Lectures will be held during the Conference. Attendance is inclusive for registered delegates and Accompanying Persons only (please indicate upon registration if you wish to attend). Additional tickets are available as follows:

Adult - AUD 30
Student - AUD 20

PLEASE NOTE ALL PUBLIC LECTURE TICKETS BOOKED OR PAID FOR AFTER THE 2ND JULY 2007 WILL NOT BE MAILED AND WILL NEED TO BE PICKED UP ONSITE  AT THE REGISTRATION DESK ON LEVEL 1 OF THE SYDNEY CONVENTION AND EXHIBITION CENTRE  IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO  THE LECTURES.

To purchase tickets to attend the Public Lectures only please click here

To register a group of people to attend the Public Lectures please complete the Group Booking Form by clicking here

Those wishing to purchase Student tickets must be able to supply a copy of a current student identification card. Please complete the form below and fax a copy of your student card to 61 2 9518 7222, email a scanned version to info@grg18.com or post a photocopy to PO Box 601 Pyrmont NSW 2009.  If we do not receive a copy of your student card, you will be charged the Adult ticket price.

The Warped Side of the Universe From the Big Bang to Black Holes and Gravitational Waves There is a warped side to our universe: objects and phenomena, such as black holes and the big-bang, that are made wholly or largely from warped space and time. The ideal tool for probing this mysterious warped side is radiation that itself is made from warped space and time --- gravitational waves. Thorne will describe the warped side of our universe and the quest to probe it with gravitational waves.
Professor Kip Thorne The Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics California Institute of Technology Click here for a full biography Tuesday 10 July 2007 19:00 - 20:30 Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre
What Happened Before the Big Bang? A Novel Answer to a Profound Cosmological Puzzle. One of the foundation stones of physics is the second law of thermodynamics, which says, in effect, that things get more "random" as time progresses. Accordingly, the beginning of the universe—the "big bang"—must have been an extraordinarily precisely organized (i.e. very non-random) state. But the particular nature of this state provides us with an apparent paradox, raising the profound issue of how such a special state can have come about. In this talk, a novel, perhaps outrageous, solution is suggested, which involves an examination of what is to be expected in the very remote future of our universe, with its observed accelerated expansion.
Sir Roger Penrose The Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics The University of Oxford Click here for a full biography Friday 13 July 2007 19:00 - 20:30 Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre

Main banner captions:

image 1: 'Distribution of detached white-dwarf–white-dwarf binaries in our galaxy as a function of the gravitational wave frequency and chirp mass.' from Simulation of the white dwarf–white dwarf galactic background in the LISA data Jeffrey A Edlund, Massimo Tinto, Andrzej Królak, and Gijs Nelemans 2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 S913-S926

image 2: 'A three-dimensional visualization of the mesh including the excised region and the refinement around the particle.', from A toy model for testing finite element methods to simulate extreme-mass-ratio binary systems Carlos F Sopuerta, Pengtao Sun Pablo Laguna and Jinchao Xu 2006 Class. Quantum Grav. 23 251-285

image 3: 'Scalar gravitational field > at time t = 140M (n = 30 000).', from A toy model for testing finite element methods to simulate extreme-mass-ratio binary systems Carlos F Sopuerta, Pengtao Sun Pablo Laguna and Jinchao Xu 2006 Class. Quantum Grav. 23 251-285