Public Lecture

The Invisible Universe: The Higgs Boson, Dark Matter and Gravitational Waves

Marcela Carena

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Wed, Jul 2, 5:30–6:30pm

Flug Forum, Aspen Center for Physics

Click Here To RSVP

Most of the Universe is invisible, but the invisibles determine our everyday existence. There is an invisible energy field, related to the Higgs boson, that provides mass. There is dark matter that holds our galaxy together, but we have yet to detect it in the laboratory. We have only recently learned how to detect gravity waves – ripples in spacetime – coming from the far corners of the cosmos, and possibly from dramatic events in the early Universe. The CERN Large Hadron collider may produce signals of dark matter, new forces of nature or cousins of the Higgs boson. Discoveries from the LHC and from other experiments and observatories will be needed to pull together a coherent picture of the invisible world and explain the first instants of the Big Bang.

Marcela Carena Headshot

About Marcela Carena

Professor Marcela Carena is the Executive Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada. She is also jointly appointed as a particle physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and a physics professor at the University of Chicago, where she has been a member of both the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. Prof. Carena is a renowned particle physicist who has advanced our understanding of fundamental mysteries of science related to sourcing the mass of the fundamental particles in nature, the origin of matter in the universe and the nature of dark matter. Her most recent research program explores particle physics and quantum information to tackle problems of quantum theory in the early universe. Prof. Carena is an original co-author of the Status of the Higgs Boson review of the Particle Data Book. In 2022 Carena was honored as a U.S. DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow. In 2010 Carena won the Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She was a staff member and a John Stuart Bell Fellow at CERN and was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship of the European Commission to conduct research at DESY.

Heinz R. Pagels Public Lecture Series

Heinz R Pagels was a professor of physics at Rockefeller University, president of the New York Academy of Science, a trustee of the Aspen Institute, and a member of the Aspen Center for Physics for twenty years, serving as a participant, officer, and trustee. He was also President of the International League for Human Rights. His work on chaos theory inspired the character of Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic Park book and movies. A part-time local resident, Professor Pagels died here in a mountaineering accident in 1988. His family and friends instituted the lecture series in his honor because he devoted a substantial part of his life to effective public dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Heinz Pagels

Other Upcoming Events

Public Lecture

A Century of Quantum Mechanics: From Blacksmiths to Smartphones

Wed, Jun 25, 5:30–6:30pm
Flug Forum, Aspen Center for Physics

Public Lecture

Can Physics Stop Climate Change?

Wed, Jul 9, 5:30–6:30pm
Flug Forum, Aspen Center for Physics

Public Lecture

How Bacteria Wage War to Survive in Your Microbiome

Wed, Jul 16, 5:30–6:30pm
Flug Forum, Aspen Center for Physics