Editor’s note: Credentialed media are welcome to attend the meeting.
For press registration, contact Andy Fell.

The latest data and theories on cosmic inflation and the origins of
the universe will be discussed at a conference at the University of
California, Davis, March 22-25.

The meeting comes at a profoundly exciting time in cosmology, as a
flood of data from satellites and balloon experiments allows
cosmologists to put their theories to the test. The Davis meeting
will be the first opportunity for major figures in the field to
debate findings from NASA’s Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP)
satellite, said UC Davis cosmologist Andreas Albrecht, one of the
principal organizers of the meeting.

Confirmed external speakers include Alan Guth, MIT; Andre Linde,
Stanford University; Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University, England;
Martin Rees, Cambridge University and Astronomer Royal, England; Paul
Steinhardt, Princeton University; David Spergel, Princeton
University; Michael Turner, University of Chicago; and Joe Silk,
Oxford University, England, among others.

In addition to the scientific meeting, Hawking will give two public
lectures at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis on
March 23 and 28. Rees will also give a public lecture in Davis on
March 31.

Cosmic inflation theory, first formulated 20 years ago by Alan Guth,
holds that the universe expanded very rapidly in a tiny fraction of a
second after the Big Bang. This inflation magnified slight
differences in the primordial material and the first stars and
galaxies then coalesced around these “wrinkles.” Cosmologists can
study these wrinkles by looking at the background of microwave energy
in the universe — a faint afterglow of the Big Bang.

The theory has been used to explain questions such as how and why
galaxies formed, and why the universe seems to be flat.

“Cosmic inflation is attractive because it explains things that are
mysterious in the standard Big Bang model,” Albrecht said.

Albrecht likens the universe to a pencil standing on its point. When
you see a pencil standing on end, you know something must have put it
there and stops it from falling into an apparently more stable
position.

“Inflation is the scheme that puts the pencil on its point,” he said.

Additional information:
More information and online registration http://inflation03.ucdavis.edu

Media contact(s):

* Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533, ahfell@ucdavis.edu

Additional contact(s):

* Andreas Albrecht, Physics, (530) 754-9269, albrecht@physics.ucdavis.edu