May 6 2015
Four decades ago, Dr. Stephen Hawking posed a paradox about black holes that still challenges the imaginations of physicists today. The “information paradox” suggests that nothing, not even information itself, survives beyond a black hole’s event horizon, which clashes with the quantum principle that information cannot be destroyed.
One of the most promising approaches to resolving this paradox is string theory. On May 6, Dr. Amanda Peet, a physicist at the University of Toronto, will describe how the “Legos” in the string theory toolbox can help study the extreme physics of black holes.
“What I want to get across to people is that string theory, although it might sound scary, is actually a surprisingly simple idea,” says Peet. “Just starting from some relatively simple Legos, without getting into all the technicalities, we can understand how strings are versatile and how they can be applied.”
The talk, titled “String Theory Legos for Black Holes,” is part of the Perimeter Institute Public Lecture Series presented by Sun Life Financial, and will be webcast live May 6. Online viewers will be invited to submit questions for Peet via social media.
Originally from the island nation of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Peet earned a BSc at the University of Canterbury and a PhD from Stanford University, and has won a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship. Peet was also featured in the three-part documentary “The Elegant Universe” on the PBS NOVA series.
Source: http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/