The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts will host a free public science lecture at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7, as part of Homecoming 2023.
Dr. Bharat Ratra, a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Kansas State University, will present “The Accelerating Expanding Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Einstein’s Cosmological Constant.” Ratra works in the areas of cosmology and astroparticle physics. He researches the structure and evolution of the universe.
The lecture will be held in the Creativity and Innovation Complex on the school’s campus at 200 Whittington, Ave. The event is open to the public.
Dark energy, a mysterious phenomenon hidden from our direct observations, holds the key to understanding why our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Ratra will speak about the “standard” model of cosmology, which describes how the universe evolved from the rapid inflation near its very beginning to the complex hierarchy of structure seen today, in a non-technical talk.