Beyond Einstein: A live Webcast from around the Globe

Thursday, December 1, 2005, from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST

Batavia, Ill.—“The Late Show with Leon Lederman” is one of many highlights of a 12-hour live Webcast produced by the European laboratory CERN, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and other partners, including physics laboratories, science museums and technology partners. The Web cast, with contributions from around the globe, will celebrate Albert Einstein and look beyond the World Year of Physics 2005. The Webcast will take place on December 1 from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST. The public will have access to the entire Webcast from the Fermilab homepage at www.fnal.gov.

Nobel laureate and former Fermilab director Lederman will host his show from 2:00-3:30 p.m. live from Fermilab. The show will feature interviews with young physicists, fun physics demonstrations and live music. Journalists interested in attending the live filming of the show at Fermilab should contact Kurt Riesselmann in Fermilab’s Office of Public Affairs at kurtr@fnal.gov or call 630-840-5681. The program of the entire Webcast is available at www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein/
The 12-hour Webcast will be broadcast live on the Internet from several locations. The main Webcast studio will be located in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation in Geneva, Switzerland. Other locations around the world are connected via videoconference: the Telecom Future Centre (Venice), Imperial College London, Fermilab (Batavia, Illinois), the Exploratorium (San Francisco) hosting scientists from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Bloomfield Science Museum (Jerusalem) and the National Science Education Centre (Taipei).

From the seven main platforms, “internauts” will be taken on a world tour to physics laboratories and science museums, visiting virtually all the time zones of the planet, from Europe to America, from Asia to Tasmania and as far south as Antarctica.

The program includes subjects such as relativity, gravitational waves, mass and gravity, antimatter and neutrinos, along with the mysteries remaining in Einstein’s physics, and the technologies derived from it. A global audience will be able to discuss the impact of Einstein’s discoveries and look beyond them with top-level physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies, and with physics Nobel laureates David Gross, Murray Gell-Mann and Gerard ‘t Hooft, connected from the 2005 Solvay physics Conference in Brussels (10:10 CST).

Einstein was also a refugee, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will discuss the positive contribution refugees can make to their society of adoption.

Peter Kirstein from University College London, who was instrumental in the Internet’s early evolution, will be joined by fellow Internet pioneer Bob Kahn, and Robert Cailliau who played a key role at the birth of the Web, to explore the role that basic science plays in the evolution of information technology.

Other highlights include the award ceremony of the Pirelli Relativity Challenge from the Telecom Future Centre in Venice (8:30 CST), and an online quiz for 15 to 19 year-olds. Based on three top mysteries stemming from Einstein’s theories, this competition will offer Apple iBook and Apple iPod prizes to the winners.

Watch the live Webcast and take part in the online quiz on
Thursday, December 1, 2005
5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST
http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein

The Beyond Einstein partners will be available to answer the press and media questions at a dedicated preview event on the Web on Monday 28 November at 17:00 CET. Join from http://www.cern.ch/beyondeinstein/press

For more information on the Webcast contact:

Fermilab program: kurtr@fnal.gov, phone: 630-840-5681
General information: paola.catapano@cern.ch phone: +41 76 487 36 17
Technical information: silvano.de.gennaro@cern.ch phone: +41 76 487 41 38

Journalists wishing to join the Web press event on November 28 should contact: neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU

Journalists wishing to join the event in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation in Geneva on December 1 should contact: Renilde.Vanden.Broeck@cern.ch

Additional media contacts:

Imperial College London:
David Colling, d.colling@imperial.ac.uk, +44 777619 63 61
National Science Education Center Taipei:
Paoti Chang, pchang@phys.ntu.edu.tw, +886 2 33665151
Pirelli Relativity Challenge:
Massimo Armeni, massimo.armeni@pirelli.com, +39 06 69517610
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center:
Neil Calder, neil.calder@SLAC.Stanford.EDU, +1 650-926-8707
The 2005 Solvay Conference in Physics, Brussels:
Marc Henneaux, henneaux@ulb.ac.be, +32 2 650 5423 – 5816
The Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem:
Varda Gur Ben Shitrit, varda@mada.org.il, +972-2-6544884
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
Martine Pochon, pochon@unhcr.org, +41 22 7397738
The Exploratorium, San Francisco:
Linda Dackman, lindad@exploratorium.edu, +1-415-561-0363
World Year of Physics International Steering Committee:
Ophelia Fornari, o.fornari@eps.org, +33 3 89 32 94 48

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.