Leon Lederman
Dept. of Physics
Illinois Institute of Technology
The theme of this talk will be the role of tools in scientific research. I use the 400-year anniversary of the invention of the telescope by Galileo to review his use of it to discover the moons of Jupiter, sunspots, and the orbit of Venus around the sun. Telescopes are briefly traced to the Hubble and the vast increase in mankind's knowledge of the world all from evolutions of Galileo's crude telescope.
This segues to the LHC, the new accelerator soon to operate at CERN on the French/Swiss border. The LHC has protons colliding with protons at a total energy of 14 TeV, seven times that of the accelerator at current world leader Fermilab.
I will review the expectations we have for this new tool, as far-reaching as Galileo's telescope, and recapitulate the advances made by the use of new tools.
Tuesday, April 14th at 4:00 PM
Room L211, Technological Institute
Refreshments are served at 3:30 PM
