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The View from the End of the Universe

Brandon University Faculty of Science Seminar Series 2025-26 https://www.brandonu.ca/science/seminar-se... September 12, 2025 Jeff Williams Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Brandon University The View from the End of the Universe Abstract: When he was a boy, Albert Einstein wondered how the world would look if he could travel on a beam of light. Such thought experiments, coupled with a remarkable physical intuition, led him on a ten-year quest to create a new theory of gravity. His quest came to an end in 1915, when his theory took its final form. He named it, ‘General Relativity.’ This talk is concerned with a recent new approach to the study of gravity, one that is equivalent to General Relativity but uses different visual imagery: The workings of the universe are displayed through their effect on beams of light. This new approach (which is called ‘the null-surface formulation’) was inspired by Einstein’s early musing on the properties of light. Questions to be addressed in the talk include: Does our universe have an end—or does it go on forever? What can be learned from how the galaxies and interstellar gas clouds cause passing light rays to bend? This audience-friendly talk will be illustrated by drawings and photographs. Technical details will be kept to a minimum. Everyone is welcome. Biography: Dr. Jeff Williams obtained a B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematical Physics at the University of Birmingham in England. His thesis concerned the topological description of the intrinsic spin of elementary particles. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta in Canada and then at the University of Brussels in Belgium. He subsequently became the statistician at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England. Moving back to Canada, he took a position as assistant professor at the University of Calgary, where he continued his work on topology, but in reference to general relativity. Later, he took a similar position at Mount Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1986, he joined the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Brandon University. His current research focuses on the null-surface formulation of general relativity.