A Workshop sponsored by the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies

DARK ENERGY AND THE PREPOSTEROUS UNIVERSE
Public Lecture by Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology 

Wednesday, December 1, 2010, 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm, Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford

PROGRAM (PDFHTML)

THE EVENT
One of the most important and surprising scientific discoveries of the late 20th century was that the cosmological expansion of space is not slowing down, as had been expected due to the gravitational pull of all the matter in the Universe, but rather is increasing with time.  We do not have a fundamental understanding of the root cause of this accelerating expansion.  We label our ignorance with the term "Dark Energy".  Although only definitively identified a dozen years ago, this Dark Energy dominates the energy density of the Universe.  International communities of scientists - including astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists, and experimental and theoretical particle physicists - have banded together to attack this problem, to design future observational probes of Dark Energy, and to offer theoretical explanations that could be tested with these probes.  Scientists in France and at Stanford are actively engaged and collaborating with one another on both the theoretical and experimental fronts. In order to take the next step in addressing the fundamental nature of Dark Energy, we must increase the sensitivity of our instruments to unprecedented levels, necessitating new levels of understanding of Dark Energy, stimulate ideas for tackling these issues, and spawn collaborations to work on these ideas.  This Workshop will foster interactions and spawn new collaborations not only between France, Stanford and other US institutions, but also between scientists working in the various fields represented at the Workshop.
The Workshop is organized to maximize interactions and will include panel discussions, roundtable discussions for smaller groups of people to address questions in detail, and ample time for informal discussions. Read more

SPONSORS AND CO-SPONSORS
France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
Department of Physics, Stanford University
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) & Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particles (IN2P3)
Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC Paris 6) 
Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7) 
Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et des Hautes Energies (LPNHE) 

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
France

Gérard Bonneaud, co-chair
Yannick Mellier
Reynald Pain
Gabriele Veneziano



LPNHE, Universités Pierre et Marie Curie & Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, CNRS/INSU
LPNHE, Universités Pierre et Marie Curie & Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
Collège de France, Paris

USA
Steve Allen
Roger Blandford
Patricia Burchat, co-chair
Steve Kahn

Stanford Department of Physics, SLAC PPA
Stanford Department of Physics, SLAC PPA
Stanford Department of Physics
Stanford Department of Physics, SLAC PPA

PARTICIPANTS
Andreas Albrecht
Steve Allen Stanford
Pierre Astier
James G. Bartlett
Pierre Binetruy
Roger Blandford
Gérard Bonneaud
François Bouchet
Marusa Bradac
Philippe Brax
Stan Brodsky
Patricia Burchat
Robert Cahn
Sean Carroll
Sarah Church
Michael Dine
Chris Hirata
Henk Hoekstra
Daniel Holz
Steve Kahn
Renata Kallosh
Alex Kim
Philip Marshall
Andrei Linde
Reynald Pain
Saul Perlmutter
Patrick Petitjean
Aaron Roodman
David Schlegel
Uros Seljak
Leonardo Senatore
Eva Silverstein
Michael S. Turner
Gabriele Veneziano
Risa Wechsler 


University of California, Davis
University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
LPNHE, Universités Pierre et Marie Curie & Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
AstroParticule et Cosmologie, Université Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
AstroParticule et Cosmologie, Université Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
LPNHE, Universités Pierre et Marie Curie & Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, CNRS/INSU
University of California, Davis
Service de Physique Théorique, CEA/DSM/SPhT Saclay
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Stanford Department of Physics
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
Stanford University
University of California, Santa Cruz
California Institute of Technology
Leiden University
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Stanford University
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
KIPAC & Oxford University
Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
LPNHE, Universités Pierre et Marie Curie & Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3
University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, CNRS/INSU
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley
Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
University of Chicago
Collège de France, Paris
Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory