Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics Will Lecture at Baylor

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Dr. Steven Weinberg, professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin and Nobel Laureate has been invited to speak at the Baylor Particle Physics Seminar presented by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the department of physics.

Weinberg's lecture "Gravity at Short Distances" will discuss quantum gravity in theoretical physics and the many problems with various calculations of distances the "size of an atomic nucleus." Weinberg said that in Einstein's quantum theory of gravity, matter can collapse to a point in space with infinite energy density and infinite space time curvature.

"These absurdities, which have been exercising the attention of physicists for many decades, are precisely the problems that involve gravity at short distances," Weinberg said. "Einstein's theory is nothing but an approximation valid at long distances, which cannot be expected to deal successfully with infinities and singularities."

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be at 3:30 p.m., Monday, April 19 in the Baylor Sciences Building room D.110. A reception for Weinberg will be held prior to his lecture at 3 p.m. on the second floor D wing in the BSB.

Weinberg earned his Nobel Prize in 1979 along with his team, Abdus Salem and Sheldon Lee Glashow, for "their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current."

Weinberg received his bachelor's in 1954 from Cornell University and earned his doctorate in physics from Princeton University in 1957. In 1982, Weinberg went to the University of Texas at Austin and is the Jack S. Josey-Welch Foundation Chair in Science.

by Colton Wright, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805