Venue: Frederic Wood Theatre, UBC

Date/Time: Tuesday, December 9, 7pm

Tickets: For tickets, please contact the Frederic Wood Theatre box office: 604.822.2678 (note that this phone number has been updated since the posters were printed). Box office hours are Monday to Friday from 10am to 4pm (PST, UTC-8). Tickets are free, but are limited to a maximum of 4 per person

Abstract: Ninety-five percent of the universe is missing! Astronomical observations suggest that most of the mass of the universe is in a mysterious form called dark matter holding galaxies together and most of the energy in the universe is in an even more mysterious form called dark energy accelerating the cosmic expansion. Unlocking the secrets of dark matter and dark energy will illuminate the nature of space and time and connect the quantum with the cosmos.

Speaker Bio: Edward W. Kolb (known to most as Rocky) is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the College and Chair of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, as well as a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. In 1983 he was the founding head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group and in 2004 the founding Director of the Particle Astrophysics Center at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

Kolb is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was the recipient of the 2003 Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the 1993 Quantrell Prize for teaching excellence at the University of Chicago. His book for the general public, Blind Watchers of the Sky, received the 1996 Emme Award of the American Aeronautical Society.

The field of Rocky's research is the application of elementary-particle physics to the very early Universe. In addition to over 200 scientific papers, he is a co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology.

He has travelled the world, if not yet the Universe, giving scientific and public lectures. Rocky has appeared in several television productions, most recently interviewing Stephen Hawking for the Discovery Channel. He can also be seen in the IMAX film The Cosmic Voyage, released in the summer of 1996.