Dr. W. A. Horowitz (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

"The Physics of a Trillion Degrees"

Abstract: A microsecond after the Big Bang, all of space existed at a trillion degrees, one hundred thousand times hotter than the center of the sun. 13.8 billion years later, massive collaborations of thousands of scientists recreate these conditions of the early universe thousands of times a second in one of the most expensive and complicated science experiments ever attempted. Using the world's most powerful femtoscope, we utilize the methods of quantum field theory to explore the limits of the smallest scales that can support non-trivial, emergent, many-body physics.