EXTRA: Read About It!
On Monday, the students attended four
physics talks in the morning. The first part of the program was a
roundtable on astrophysics. Richard Giacconi (US), Masatoshi
Koshiba (Japan), Arno Penzias (US), and Gerardus ‘t Hooft
(The Netherlands) presented. Dr. Lars Bergström, representative of the
Nobel Committee of Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences, served as the chairman of the roundtable. All the
Laureates had time to share their insights into recent discoveries
in astrophysics as relevant to their interests and focus. After a
break, the Laureates took questions (written and verbal) from the
audience. Some questions asked of the panel were “Explain the
difference between atmospheric and solar neutrinos” “What are the
two kinds of dark matter?”
The roundtable
discussion was followed with three individual talks. Dr. Klaus
von Klitzing (Germany) discussed topics within materials science.
One topic discussed was quantum dots which could be used for
quantum computing. Dr. Walter Kohn (US) discussed how he moved
from particle physics to studying the van der Waals interactions
using a technique he developed, the density functional approach.
Dr. Herbert Kroemer discussed the possibility of negative optical
refraction and how to construct a material with such properties.
In the afternoon,
the Laureates met with smaller groups of students to answer
questions of both a scientific and a philosophical nature. |
