Gandhinagar: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) is going to host a colloquium on various aspects of gravitational physics on February 27, 2020, at 5 pm, in Academic Block 1/103.Titled as ‘Avatars of Gravity’, the colloquium will be presented by Prof Thanu Padmanabhan from Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune.

Prof Thanu Padmanabhan is an internationally acclaimed theoretical physicist known for his seminal contribution in the field of gravitational physics and cosmology. His research work spans a wide variety of topics in Gravitation, Cosmology and Quantum Gravity. He has made several contributions related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and the interpretation of gravity as an emergent phenomenon. Prof Padmanabhan has received several national and international awards including Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (1996), Infosys Science Foundation Prize for Physical Sciences (2009), TWAS Prize in Physics (2011), and Padma Shri in 2007.He has authored several advanced level textbooks which are used worldwide as standard references.

In this colloquium, he will describe different intriguing aspects of gravitational physics, including black holes and the cosmological constant. He will also describe a new approach to quantum gravity which provides a refreshingly new perspective on cosmology and offers the possibility of testing the theory using cosmological observations. The colloquium will be attended by the students from various universities and colleges in and around Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad region.