FREE PUBLIC EVENT: The Hamilton Science & Faith Forum and the CSCA present a lecture by Robert B. Mann (Professor of Physics, UWaterloo).
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Note!
Attendees are welcome (but not required) to stay afterward 2019 CSCA Annual General Meeting (AGM). Dinner after the talk requires advance registration and a $10 fee (student members free). Details about the AGM are at this link.
A Finely Tuned Universe
It is now more than 60 years since fine-tuning arguments entered into physics. Since then many exciting discoveries have been made: new subatomic particles, gravitational waves, the Higgs Boson, are just a few. Given these developments, I shall review the status of fine-tuning in 2019, from both scientific and theological viewpoints, and provide some comments as to where such arguments might go in the future.
Robert B. Mann has a B.Sc. in physics from McMaster University and an M.Sc.and Ph.D from the University of Toronto, and he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Currently a Professor of Physics at the University of Waterloo, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Cambridge Universities. At Waterloo, he works on gravitation, quantum physics, and the overlap between these two subjects. He is interested in questions that provide us with information about the foundations of physics, particularly those that could be tested by experiment. Author of over 350 papers, he has received several awards, including the 2019 Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) Medal for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduate Physics, a Fulbright Fellowship, Teaching Excellence awards from the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance and from the University of Waterloo, and an Outstanding Referee Award from the American Physical Society. He was chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo from 2001-2008 and is an Affiliate Member of the Perimeter Institute and the Institute for Quantum Computing. He was president of the CAP (2009-11) and of the CSCA (1996-2005), and served on the Advisory Board of the John Templeton Foundation. His research interests are in black holes, cosmology, particle physics, quantum foundations, and quantum information, and the science/religion dialogue.