Mysteries of the Dark Universe Featuring Dr. Edward 'Rocky' Kolb Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago

Ninety-five percent of the universe is missing! Dr. Kolb will discuss astronomical observations that suggest most of the mass of the universe is in a mysterious form called dark matter, and most of the energy in the universe is in an even more mysterious form called dark energy. Unlocking the secrets of dark matter and dark energy will illuminate the nature of space and time and connect the quantum with the cosmos.


Edward W. Kolb (known to most as Rocky) is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the College, and Dean of the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. He also is a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. He was a founding head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group and founding director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics, both at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.

Kolb's field of research is the application of elementary particle physics to the very early universe. He particularly focuses on attempting to understand physical processes that occurred in the very earliest moments of the big bang. In these very early moments the density, energy and pressure of the universe resembled the conditions obtained in the collisions of particles at high-energy accelerators.

A recipient of several awards for teaching excellence, His book Blind Watchers of the Sky, written for the general public, received the 1996 Emme award from the American Astronautical Society. He also is a co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology. Kolb has appeared in several television productions, and he can be seen in the IMAX film The Cosmic Voyage.

Full bio available here.