Physicist to delve into ‘The Evolution of the Universe –
Higgs and Beyond’ at SMU April 4
SMU physics professor Ryszard Stroynowski, who participated in the recent discovery of the Higgs boson “God particle” that helps explain the “Big Bang” start of the universe, will be featured speaker at the Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility Public Scholar Lecture at SMU April 4.
Set for McFarlin Auditorium’s second floor mezzanine, the event will begin with a reception with hors d’oeuvres at 11:30 a.m., and follow with the lecture from noon to 1 p.m. The Public Scholar Lecture, co-sponsored by The Faculty Club, will be free and open to the public.
Discovery of the Higgs boson was confirmed March 14, 2013, at CERN, the Swiss-based European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Described as a triumph for science, observation of the Higgs boson is the greatest physics discovery of the last 50 years and opens a vast new frontier for more research.
The achievement is the result of CERN’s global collaboration of thousands of scientists, including physicists from SMU, and CERN’s massive $10 billion Large Hadron Collider proton smasher.
“We teach students about science as an unchanging set of basic rules that govern our physical world as we see it today. We justify them by quoting selected historical developments of our understanding creating an impression that science changes in a logical, linear fashion. Such a picture is not quite right,” Stroynowski explains. “In our lifetime, many fields of science have undergone major revolutions of thought and paradigm changes.”
For more details about the Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility Public Scholar Lecture, contact smu.edu/publicscholars or call 214-768-4255.
The Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility is a University-wide center supporting student and faculty ethics-related education and activities, as well as community outreach to private and public institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Maguire Ethics Center serves as a forum for the exploration of issues bearing on the public good. It also seeks to challenge and encourage the development of ethical discernment, imagination and action. It brings together those who confront issues of social importance with resources and opportunities for ethical reflection. For more information, visit smu.edu/ethics.
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