UMD_CMNS_Physics_S1_CMYK

  • Research News

    Researchers Imagine Novel Quantum Foundations for Gravity

    Questioning assumptions and imagining new explanations for familiar phenomena are often necessary steps on the way to scientific progress. For example, humanity’s understanding of gravity has been overturned multiple times. For ages, people assumed heavier objects always fall quicker than lighter objects. Eventually, Galileo… Read More
  • Research News

    Researchers Spy Finish Line in Race for Majorana Qubits

    Our computer age is built on a foundation of semiconductors. As researchers and engineers look toward a new generation of computers that harness quantum physics, they are exploring various foundations for the burgeoning technology. Almost every computer on earth, from a pocket calculator to… Read More
  • Research News

    Superconductivity’s Halo: Physicists Map Rare High-field Phase

     A puzzling form of superconductivity that arises only under strong magnetic fields has been mapped and explained by a research team of UMD, NIST and Rice University including  professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. Their findings,  published in Science July 31, detail how uranium… Read More
  • Research News

    A Cosmic Photographer: Decades of Work to Get the Perfect Shot

    John Mather, a College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and a senior astrophysicist at NASA, has made a career of looking to the heavens. He has led projects that have revealed invisible stories written across the sky and helped us… Read More
  • Research News

    New Protocol Demonstrates and Verifies Quantum Speedups in a Jiffy

    While breakthrough results over the past few years have garnered headlines proclaiming the dawn of quantum supremacy, they have also masked a nagging problem that researchers have been staring at for decades: Demonstrating the advantages of a quantum computer is only half the battle;… Read More
  • Research News

    Work on 2D Magnets Featured in Nature Physics Journal

    University of Maryland Professor Cheng Gong (ECE), along with his postdocs Dr. Ti Xie, Dr. Jierui Liang and collaborators in Georgetown University (Professor Kai Liu group), UC Berkeley (Professor Ziqiang Qiu), University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Professor David Mandrus group) and UMD Physics (Professor Victor M. Yakovenko), have made… Read More
  • Research News

    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Reveals a Key Particle Accelerator Near the Sun

    Flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft before it, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe uncovered a new source of energetic particles near Earth’s star, according to a new study co-authored by University of Maryland researchers.  Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on May 29, 2025,… Read More
  • Research News

    Time Crystal Research Enters a New Phase

    Our world only exists thanks to the diverse properties of the many materials that make it up. The differences between all those materials result from more than just which atoms and molecules form them. A material’s properties also depend on how those basic building… Read More
  • Research News

    Mysteriously Mundane Turbulence Revealed in 2D Superfluid

    Despite existing everywhere, the quantum world is a foreign place where many of the rules of daily life don’t apply. Quantum objects jump through solid walls; quantum entanglement connects the fates of particles no matter how far they are separated; and quantum objects may… Read More
  • 1 Researchers Imagine Novel Quantum Foundations for Gravity
  • 2 Researchers Spy Finish Line in Race for Majorana Qubits
  • 3 Superconductivity’s Halo: Physicists Map Rare High-field Phase
  • 4 A Cosmic Photographer: Decades of Work to Get the Perfect Shot
  • 5 New Protocol Demonstrates and Verifies Quantum Speedups in a Jiffy
  • 6 Work on 2D Magnets Featured in Nature Physics Journal
  • 7 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Reveals a Key Particle Accelerator Near the Sun
  • 8 Time Crystal Research Enters a New Phase
  • 9 Mysteriously Mundane Turbulence Revealed in 2D Superfluid

Physics is Phun

Department News

  • Summer at Summit Station For most graduate students, research trips primarily mean conferences. For Aishwarya Vijai, it meant a month at Summit Station, Greenland, deep inside the Arctic Circle. Summit Station is located near the apex of the Greenland ice sheet at an elevation of ~10,000 feet above sea… Read More
  • Jacob "Bob" Dorfman, 1937-2025 Professor Emeritus Jacob Robert Dorfman died on August 27, 2025. A native of Pittsburgh, Dorfman grew up in Baltimore and received his bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. After three years of post-doctoral research at the Rockefeller University, he was appointed a UMD… Read More
  • Solving a Decades-long Solar Flare Mystery For almost half a century, scientists have been scratching their heads over one of the strangest and most inexplicable phenomena to occur on the sun. During certain explosive events like solar flares, helium-3 (an extremely rare isotope normally found in tiny quantities) suddenly becomes dramatically… Read More
  • From Lab Bench to Launch Pad When University of Maryland physics major Dhruv Agarwal first learned about phase change materials—substances that maintain stable temperatures in extreme conditions—in his freshman year, he never imagined the concept would eventually take him to the stars. Now a junior, Agarwal uses his expertise in the… Read More
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
› ‹

Upcoming Events

10 Sep
QuICS Seminar: David Gross
Date Wed, Sep 10, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
11 Sep
CMTC JLDS Seminar
Thu, Sep 11, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
11 Sep
QMC COLLOQUIUM - Eric Pop; Stanford University
Thu, Sep 11, 2025 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
11 Sep
Physics/Math RIT
Thu, Sep 11, 2025 3:15 pm - 4:30 pm
12 Sep
CMTC JLDS Seminar
Fri, Sep 12, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
12 Sep
Friday Quantum Seminar: Lorcan Conlon
Fri, Sep 12, 2025 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
15 Sep
JQI Seminar - Saikat Guha
Mon, Sep 15, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
15 Sep
EPT Seminar - Owen Leonard, Indiana University
Mon, Sep 15, 2025 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
15 Sep
Space and Cosmic Ray Physics Seminar
Mon, Sep 15, 2025 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Quantum Nature of the Big Bang in Simple Models

Details
Hits: 5965
Abhay Ashketar, Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, Penn State
May 04, 2010

According to general relativity, space-time ends at singularities and classical physics just stops. In particular, the big bang is regarded as The Beginning. However, general relativity is incomplete because it ignores quantum effects. Through simple models, I will illustrate how the quantum nature of space-time geometry resolves the big bang singularity. Quantum physics does not stop there. Indeed, quantum space-times can be vastly larger than what general relativity had us believe. I will discuss illustrative consequences of this new Planck scale physics.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.