Stardust is delighted to have Prof. Lubin from UC Santa Barbara will be delivering two seminars at Strathclyde University on Tuesday 24th of June. The first is entitled “Searching for the Beginning of the Universe”. Prof. Lubin will discuss our understanding of Cosmic Microwave Background and Gravitational Waves and the difficulties faced in attempting to accurately search for and measure these. In the second seminar entitled “Prospects for Directed Energy Planetary Defence” our guest will present the DE-STAR (Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploration) project and its potential not only for tackling asteroids and comets, but also for relativistic spacecraft propulsion and interstellar and intergalactic communication.

Philip Lubin is a professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara whose primary research has been focused on studies of the early universe in the millimetre wavelengths bands. His group has designed, developed and fielded more than two dozen ground based and balloon borne missions and helped develop two major cosmology satellites. Among other accomplishments his group first detected the horizon scale fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background from both their South Pole and balloon borne systems twenty years ago and their latest results, along with an international teams of ESA and NASA researchers, are from the Planck cosmology mission which have mapped in exquisite detail the structures of the early universe. He is a co-I on the Planck mission. He is co-recipient of the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the COBE science team for their ground-breaking work in cosmology. He has published more than 250 papers.