Professor Tony Gherghetta, Federation Fellow at the University of Melbourne, will speak about the world's most powerful microscope - the Large Hadron Collider - at a free public lecture in The University of Western Australia's Social Sciences Lecture Theatre on Tuesday, 14 October. 

The Large Hadron Collider, housed in a 27km circular tunnel deep under the Swiss-French border at CERN in Switzerland, is expected to revamp modern physics by smashing together particles in a bid to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang.

In probing the subnuclear frontier, a new theory is required to explain the shortcomings of our current understanding of particle physics.  The two leading candidate theories both involve new dimensions of spacetime.  These could be in the form of extra space dimensions, such as a 5th dimension, or be new quantum dimensions of spacetime:  supersymmetry.

This lecture will discuss exciting ideas at the forefront of modern high-energy physics.  In particular it will explore why we think there might be a 5th dimension, and describe how it could be seen with the Large Hadron Collider.

Professor Gherghetta received his BSc (Hons) degree from UWA in 1987.  He has held positions at the University of Michigan and the University of Lausanne as well as being awarded a non-Member State Fellowship at CERN in Switzerland, the world's leading particle physics laboratory.

His research is part of the world-wide effort to understand the building blocks of the Universe that will be explored at the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN.

WHAT:           Free lecture open to the public, no RSVP required.

WHEN:           Tuesday 14 October, 2008
                       6pm-7pm

WHERE:        Social Sciences Lecture Theatre, UWA
                      (The nearest carpark is P3 off Hackett Drive Entrance 1)

Media references

Audrey Barton (UWA Institute of Advanced Studies)      (+61 8)  6488 4797
Associate Professor Sergei Kuzenko (UWA Physics)      (+61 8)  6488 2757
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)      (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716