Fwd: Cosmology and Constants of Nature meeting for philosophers of science: Monday 17 March to Weds 19 March (mornings), Cambridge

[Karim Thébault]

--------
Cosmology and the Constants of Nature
Monday, 17 March 2014 at 09:00 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014 at 15:00 (GMT);
DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

The Constants of Nature are quantities, whose numerical values we know with
the greatest experimental accuracy - but about the rationale for those
values, we have the greatest ignorance. We might also ask if they are
indeed constant in space and time, and investigate whether their values
arise at random or are uniquely determined by some deep theory.

This mini-series of talks (in mornings only) is part of the joint
Oxford-Cambridge programme on the Philosophy of Cosmology which aims to
introduce philosophers of physics to fundamental problems in cosmology and
associated areas of high-energy physics.

The talks are aimed at philosophers of physics but should also be of
interest to a wide range of cosmologists.  Speakers will introduce the
physical constants that define the standard model of particle physics and
cosmology together with the data that determine them,
describe observational programmes that  test the constancy of traditional
'constants', including the cosmological constant, and discuss how
self-consistent theories of varying constants can be formulated.

Speakers:
 John Barrow, University of Cambridge
 John Ellis, King's College London
 Pedro Ferreira, University of Oxford
 Joao Magueijo, Imperial College, London
 Thanu Padmanabhan, IUCAA, Pune
 Martin Rees, University of Cambridge
 John Webb, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Registration is free and includes morning coffee and lunch.
Participants are requested to register at the conference website; where the
full programme of talks can also be found:
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/events/constants2014/


For enquiries about this event please contact Margaret Bull at
mmp at maths.cam.ac.uk



------
Jeremy Butterfield:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Butterfield
Homepage: http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/butterfield/
Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ
Tel: 01223 761524 (office); 07557-668413 (mobile); NB: new mobile number.
Visit the journal, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13552198
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lrz.de/pipermail/philphysmunich/attachments/20140125/e6d64874/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ConstantsConf_poster.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 208522 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.lrz.de/pipermail/philphysmunich/attachments/20140125/e6d64874/attachment-0001.pdf>