Physics
Showing 181-200 of 398 Results
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Andrei Linde
Humanities and Sciences Professor, Emeritus
BioWhat is the origin and the global structure of the universe?
For a long time, scientists believed that our universe was born in the big bang, as an expanding ball of fire. This scenario dramatically changed during the last 35 years. Now we think that initially the universe was rapidly inflating, being in an unstable energetic vacuum-like state. It became hot only later, when this vacuum-like state decayed. Quantum fluctuations produced during inflation are responsible for galaxy formation. In some places, these quantum fluctuations are so large that they can produce new rapidly expanding parts of the universe. This process makes the universe immortal and transforms it into a multiverse, a huge fractal consisting of many exponentially large parts with different laws of low-energy physics operating in each of them.
Professor Linde is one of the authors of inflationary theory and of the theory of an eternal inflationary multiverse. His work emphasizes the cosmological implications of string theory and supergravity.
Current areas of focus:
- Construction of realistic models of inflation based on supergravity and string theory
- Investigation of conceptual issues related to the theory of inflationary multiverse -
John Lipa
Professor (Research) of Physics, Emeritus
BioJohn Lipa received his PhD at the University of Western Austrailia. He has acted as an assistant professor, senior research associate, and professor at Stanford University. Research interests include testing of various aspects of the renormalization group theory of cooperative phase transitions.
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David Long
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDavid is a theoretical condensed matter physicist with an expertise in systems far from equilibrium. His research focuses on the dynamics of quantum systems, including many-body dynamics, the process of thermalization in nearly-localized systems, and on robust topological effects in driven systems.
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Grzegorz M. Madejski
Lecturer
BioMy English-speaking friends know me as Greg. I was born in Poland, but my college and graduate education was in the US, respectively at MIT and Harvard. After spending 14 years at NASA/Goddard, I arrived in Stanford in 2000. My research interests are mainly in extragalactic high-energy astrophysics. This includes (1) studies of active galactic nuclei, and an associated formation and evolution of relativistic jets; and (2) studies of clusters of galaxies, and in particular the processes responsible for the heating of the X-ray emitting intra-cluster gas. Besides taking advantage of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory, I am involved in analyzing and interpreting observations performed with X-ray satellites such as NuSTAR, a recently-launched NASA satellite, sensitive in the hard X-ray band, and Hitomi, a joint Japanese - US X-ray astronomy mission.
