Carleton College is pleased to present Nobel Laureate Dr. William Phillips of the National Institute of Standards and Technology on Thursday, April 18 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Olin Hall Room 149. Phillips’ lively, multi-media presentation, “Time, Einstein, and the coolest stuff in the universe,” will include exciting experimental demonstrations and down-to-earth explanations about some of today’s hottest (and coolest) science. This event is free and open to the public.
A world renowned physicist, Phillips explains, “At the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein changed the way we think about Time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of Time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the universe. Atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made, are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations. Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultra-cold atoms, achieve accuracies of about one second in 300 million years, and are getting better all the time, while a new generation of atomic clocks is leading us to re-define what we mean by time. Super-cold atoms, with temperatures that can be below a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, use, and allow tests of, some of Einstein's strangest predictions.”
Phillips is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a cooperative research organization of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Univeristy of Maryland, which is devoted to the study of quantum coherent phenomena. At NIST, Phillips leads the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group, and at JQI, he is the co-director of an NSF-funded Physics Frontier Center studying quantum phenomena across the subfields of physics.
In 1997, Dr. Phillips shared the Nobel Prize in Physics “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.” He is also the recipient of the 1998 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, the 2000 Richtmeyer Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, a 2002 NIST Condon Award, a 2005 Presidential Rank Award, and a Service to America Career Achievement Award in 2006. In 2004, he was appointed an Academician of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of Physics and Astronomy with support from The Frank G. and Jean M. Chesley Lectureship Fund. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4383. Olin Hall is located off First and Nevada Streets in Northfield on the Carleton campus.
