Science & Ultimate Reality:
Celebrating the Vision of John Archibald Wheeler
and Taking It Forward into a New Century of Discovery

Harrison/Merrill Lynch Conference Center
900 Scudders Mill Road
Plainsboro, NJ 08536 (just outside of Princeton)
609.282.6111 · Fax 609.282.2653

"Science & Ultimate Reality:
Celebrating the Vision of John Archibald Wheeler
and Taking It Forward into a New Century of Discovery"

AGENDA*

FRIDAY, MARCH 15

4:00 PM: Check-in at Welcome/Registration Desk

5:00 PM: Reception – Palmer Square Café

6:00 PM: Dinner – Willows Dining Room

7:30 PM: Plenary Session – Auditorium

Anton Zeilinger, Professor of Physics, Institute of Experimental Physics, University of Vienna: "Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe?: Three Far-reaching, Visionary Questions from John Archibald Wheeler and How They Inspired a Quantum Experimentalist"

SATURDAY, MARCH 16

7:00 AM: Breakfast available (served until 8:30) – Willows Dining Room

8:45 AM: Morning Session – Auditorium: Quantum Reality–Theory

Each presentation is allocated 35 minutes—25 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be a 20-minute break for refreshments after the third presentation.

• Lucien Hardy, Oxford University: "How Come Quantum Theory?"
• Juan Maldacena, Harvard University and Institute for Advanced Study: "Quantum Gravity as an Ordinary Gauge Theory"
• Wojciech Zurek, Los Alamos National Laboratory: "Quantum Theory of the Classical"
• Bryce DeWitt, University of Texas, Austin: "The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics"
• Max Tegmark, University of Pennsylvania: "Parallel Universes"

12:30 PM: Lunch – Willows Dining Room

2:00 PM: Afternoon Session – Auditorium: Quantum Reality–Experiment

Each presentation is allocated 35 minutes—25 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be a 20-minute break for refreshments after the third presentation.

• Raymond Chiao, University of California, Berkeley: "Conceptual Tensions Between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity: Are There Experimental Consequences?"
• Christopher Monroe, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: "Information Processing at the Quantum-Classical Frontier"
• Freeman Dyson, Institute for Advanced Study: "Thought-Experiments in Honor of John Wheeler"
• Hideo Mabuchi, California Institute of Technology: "Measurement, Feedback, and the Quantum-Classical Transition"
• Aephraim Steinberg, University of Toronto: "What Can Be Known: Past and Future"

6:00 PM: Reception in Honor of John A. Wheeler – Art Gallery

7:00 PM: Celebratory Banquet in Honor of John A. Wheeler with Master of Ceremonies Science Filmmaker and Writer Timothy Ferris and Featuring Science Cartoonist Sidney Harris – Lakeview Café

SUNDAY, MARCH 17

7:00 AM: Breakfast available (served until 8:30) – Willows Dining Room

8:45 AM: Morning Session – Auditorium: "Big Questions" in Cosmology

Each presentation is allocated 35 minutes—25 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be a 20-minute break for refreshments after the third presentation.

• Andreas Albrecht, University of California, Davis: "The Arrow of Time, Entropy and the Origins of the Universe"
• Andrei Linde, Stanford University: "Quantum Cosmology, Inflation, and Anthropic Principle"
• Joao Magueijo, Imperial College, London: "Cosmic Lessons in Physics"
• Lisa Randall, Harvard University: "The Shape of Gravity"
• Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo: "The Two Paradigms of Quantum Gravity and the Puzzle of Their Reconciliation"

12:30 PM: Lunch – Willows Dining Room

1:30 PM: Afternoon Session – Auditorium:

Each presentation is allocated 12 minutes—8 minutes for the talk and 4 minutes for discussion.
There will be two 20-minute breaks—one after the fifth presentation and one after the tenth presentation.

• Nicole Bell, NASA/Fermilab: "Coherence, Decoherence and Oscillating Neutrinos—from Quantum Zeno to Getting in Sync"
• Raphael Bousso, University of California, Santa Barbara: "The Holographic Principle"
• Anita Goel, Harvard University: "The Physics of Life"
• Steven Gubser, Princeton University: "On the Connection Between Gauge Theory and Gravity"
• Jiangping Hu, Stanford University: "An Essay on Space, Time, and the Quantum"
• Olga Khovanskaya, Moscow State University: "Dilatonic Black Holes in String Gravity and Their Relation with Parameters of [the] Early Universe"
• Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara, University of Waterloo, Canada: "Models of Planck-scale Spacetime and Quantum Cosmology"
• Michael Murphy, University of New South Wales, Australia: "Do the Fundamental Constants Vary in Spacetime?"
• Jeremy O’Brien, University of Queensland, Australia: "Exploration of the Quantum Nature of Nature and the Fabrication of a Quantum Computer"
• Jonathan Oppenheim, Hebrew University, Israel: "Bit by It"
• Jianwei Pan, University of Vienna, "Multi-Photon Interferometry and Quantum Non-Locality"
• Mary Rowe, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder: "Experimental Violation of Bell’s Inequalities with Efficient Detection"
• André Stefanov, University of Geneva, Switzerland, "Quantum Correlations with Spacelike Beamsplitters in Motion"
• Mark Topinka, Stanford University: "Imaging Flow Through Electronic Wavefunctions"
• Vlatko Vedral, Imperial College, London: "Probabilities from Amplitudes via Information Theory and Thermodynamics"

5:15 PM: Reception – Palmer Square Café

6:00 PM: Dinner – Willows Dining Room

7:30 PM: Plenary Session – Auditorium

Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University: "The Heritage of Heraclitus: John Archibald Wheeler and the Itch to Speculate"

MONDAY, MARCH 18

7:00 AM: Breakfast available (served until 8:30) – Willows Dining Room

8:45 AM: Morning Session – Auditorium: Emergence, Life, and Related Topics

Each presentation is allocated 35 minutes—25 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for discussion.
There will be a 20-minute break for refreshments after the third presentation.

• Robert Laughlin, Stanford University: "Emergent Relativity"
• George Ellis, University of Cape Town: "True Complexity and the Associated Ontology"
• Marcelo Gleiser, Dartmouth College: "Emergent Coherent Behavior and the Problem of the Three Origins: Cosmos, Life, and Mind"
• Philip Clayton, California State University, Sonoma, and Harvard University: "Emergence: Us from It"
• Stuart Kauffman, Santa Fe Institute and Bios Group: "Investigations on the Nature of Autonomous Agents"

12:15 PM: Young Researchers Competition Prize Announcements – Auditorium

12:45 PM: Lunch – Willows Dining Room

Adjournment

*Special Note: In addition to the above-named contributors, the following authors will be contributing chapters to the book that will be published based on the symposium themes (additional authors will be announced):

• John Barrow - Cambridge University: "Cosmology and Mutability"
• Paul Davies - Macquarie University, University of Queensland, and Imperial College: Overview and Summary
• David Deutsch - Oxford Univrsity: "It from Qubit"
• Serge Haroche - College of France: "From Thought Experiments to Quantum Information: Creating and Manipulating Various Kinds of Schrödinger Cats"
• Paul Kwiat - University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana: "(Quantum) Erasing the Nature of Reality"
• Juan Paz - University of Buenos Aires: "Using Qbits to Learn About It"
• Dieter Zeh - University of Heidelberg: "The Wave Function: It or Bit?"
• Shoucheng Zhang - Stanford University: "To See a World in a Grain of Sand"

**Note: Because of heightened security measures, please have a form of identification with you; baggage will be inspected, and an x-ray machine may be in place.