The Quantum and the Cosmos

Fermilab physicists, Dr. Rocky Kolb and Dr. Joe Lykken team up to explain the connection of the physics of the very small to the physics of the cosmos and their discovery of a fundamental contradiction regarding how these mysteries have led to the development of new ideas: string theory, inflation, extra dimensions and Wimpzillas, as well as Higgs boson, and other mysteries that cosmologists care about, like dark energy. Dr. Rocky Kolb is the founding head of the NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is also a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas. Postdoctoral research was performed at the California Institute of Technology and Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was the J. Robert Oppenheimer Research Fellow. In addition to over 200 scientific papers, he is co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology. His new book for the general public, Blind Watchers of the Sky (winner of the 1996 Emme award from the AAS) is the story of the people and ideas that shaped our view of the universe. Dr. Joseph D. Lykken is a theoretical particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and a professor in the Physics Department and Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. After receiving his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1982, he migrated to the University of Texas, where he worked with Steven Weinberg on the first realistic theoretical models of supersymmetry. In 1984 he joined the stampede of particle theorists into superstring theory, and spent the next decade wrestling with deep issues of how strings are related both to quantum gravity and to particle physics. In a 1996 paper he was the first to suggest that superstrings and quantum gravity might appear directly in the next generation of particle physics experiments. Since joining the theory group at Fermilab in 1989, he has been involved in planning experimental searches for supersymmetry. the Higgs boson, and for extra dimensions