AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Biography

Paul Steinhardt, Ph.D., has done research in areas that span problems in cosmology, astrophysics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. In cosmology, his work has focused on issues at the interface between fundamental physics and astrophysics. The mechanisms for driving inflationary expansion in the early universe, the connection between inflation and elementary particles, and the observational consequences of inflation are subjects of long-standing interest. Recent advances in string theory and M-theory suggest that the observable universe may lie in a three dimensional surface, a brane or domain wall, embedded in a higher dimensional space. His research group is actively exploring the cosmological consequences of this brane-world picture for the causal structure of space-time, for the cosmological constant, and for quintessence. Among his publications are "A cyclic model of the universe," P. Steinhardt and N. Turok, Science 296, 1436 (2002); "From Big Crunch to Big Bang," J. Khoury, B. Ovrut, N. Seiberg, P. Steinhardt and N. Turok, Phys. Rev. D 65, 086007 (2002); and "The Ekpyrotic Universe: Colliding Branes and the Origin of the Hot Big Bang," J. Khoury, B. Ovrut, P. Steinhardt and N. Turok, Phys. Rev. D64, 123522 (2001). Information on this topic is also available at Dr. Steinhardt's webpage.