OSU to host public physics lecture

Friday, October 4, 2013

The Oklahoma State University Department of Physics will host a public lecture on Thursday, Oct. 10, at 8 p.m. in room 123 Animal Science.  The guest speaker, Dr. Edward Fry, will discuss quantum mechanics and the decades-long history of this contentious problem in a presentation titled “Determinism, Einstein and Quantum Mechanics.”

Einstein believed that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory.  In a 1944 letter to physicist Max Born, Einstein writes, “You believe in God playing dice and I in perfect laws in the world of things existing as real objects…”

A breakthrough analysis by John Bell made it possible to experimentally test these philosophical arguments.  Fry will describe the results of the experimental tests of the Bell inequalities and will present their current status.

Fry is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University.  His research interests lie in atomic physics and light scattering.  He has specific interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum optics, laser excitation and ionization of atoms, surface scattering of hydrogen atoms, and multichannel scattered light polarization analysis.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

The public is also invited to attend the department’s weekly physics colloquium on Thursday, October 10 at 3:30 pm in room 110 Physical Science where Dr. Nicholas Suntzeff will present “The Future of Supernova Cosmology.”  Suntzeff, also a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, will discuss the present status of cosmology and the supernova data and give a glimpse of what is ahead.  He is a co-winner of the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize.

For more information about either event, please contact the OSU physics department at 405-744-5796.