In this lecture, Melko examines the thread of emergence which connects different mysteries, such as superconductivity, universality, life, consciousness, and the appearance of internet memes.

Supermassive Black Holes are awesome! But do you know what’s even more awesome? Merging supermassive black holes! Black holes smashing together is one of the most powerful and weirdest phenomena in the universe, and astronomers want to measure where, when, and how often it happens.

Philipp Kukura describes the development of mass photometry – a method that measures the mass of biomolecules and tiny particles, such as viruses, by shining light at them, effectively ‘looking at them’. He explains the principles of operation, and shows how this technique is being used broadly in academia and industry to understand the basis of disease, and aid in the development of next generation therapeutics.

Najita describes our current picture of the origins of stars and planets, the new insights gained, and the challenges we face. She also comments on what the results say about how humans make scientific advances and the kinds of investments that are vital to sustaining discovery.

In her talk, Raquel introduces the new notion of quantum geometry in quantum materials and its crucial role in determining properties and phases of matter. She discusses how quantum geometry is essential to protect emergent phases where interactions between electrons are strong and electrons behave in remarkable ways, such as those where electrons pair up and condense into a macroscopic quantum state or phases where electrons are broken into independent fractions with new quantum statistics.

What is the heaviest particle in the Universe? What is the lightest? The answer to these questions could be dark matter. For decades, we have thought that dark matter would be a particle with a mass similar to the particles we already know about, like the proton or the recently discovered Higgs boson. But in the last decade a revolution has taken place in the field, which has led to a dramatic expansion in the range of masses where we believe dark matter could live. In this talk Rodd reviews this revolution, and explains how the discovery of dark matter could amount to detecting dark waves at the location of the Earth, or massive explosions happening throughout the Universe.

Bigger telescopes are usually better telescopes… but not always. Sometimes crazier telescopes are better telescopes. In this talk Abraham describes the nearly unexplored universe of ghostly, nearly undetectable phenomena in the heavens.

The Aspen Center for Physics invites the listener to imagine with Professor Chang the particle fields that exist in empty space, to share the deep appreciation that particle physicists have for the natural world, and to imagine together the possible future in this quest to understand particle fields.

Our entire knowledge of early galaxy formation is in a state of flux. In this talk, Whitaker introduces you to the capabilities of NASA’s newest flagship mission and highlight a few of the most exciting and revolutionary results to date. Among these is the story of distinguishing the most distant galaxies from those enshrouded in thick veils of dust while teasing out the hidden monsters inside.

Nathalie describes recent efforts to achieve major improvements in two different qubit platforms: nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond and superconducting circuits.