Public Lectures

Physics for the Inquiring Mind

KITP Public Lectures connect you with people and research that is transforming our understanding of the universe. This popular series of 3-4 public lectures each year takes advantage of the presence of the many distinguished scientists who visit KITP to collaborate on the most fascinating and challenging questions in their fields.

Image showing KITP Public Lectures happening on stage

Speakers have included, among others, Conny Aerts, Peter Galison, Asimina Arvanitaki, Murray Gell-Mann, John Grunsfeld, Stephen Hawking, Robert Kirshner, Nathan Lewis, and M. Cristina Marchetti. Talks have ranged from how stars ring, projects at the large hadron collider (LHC), how the brain works, challenges for global energy, the potential in the human genome, and black holes.

Friends of KITP receive priority seat reservations, and an informal reception follows each lecture.

 

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The Force of Nothing: Attraction, Repulsion, and Motion in the Quantum Void

 

Speaker: Mehran Kardar
Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Time: Reception at 5:00 PM | Talk at 6:00 PM
Location: Kohn Hall, Lagoon Rd, UC Santa Barbara, CA | Zoom Webinar
 

 

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KITP Public Lectures Archive

Event Information
The Force of Nothing: Attraction, Repulsion, and Motion in the Quantum Void
Speaker: Mehran Kardar
Date: 2026-06-09
Watch Talk
Listening to Black Holes with Gravitational Waves
Speaker: Maya Fishbach
Date: 2025-11-06
Watch Talk
Voyage from Outer Space to Inner Space: From Gravitational Waves to the Higgs Boson
Speaker: Lance Dixon
Date: 2025-02-20
Watch Talk
Recreational Biology: Topological puzzles in cell biology
Speaker: Manu Prakash
Date: 2024-10-14
Watch Talk
Living in the Matrix: Recent Advances in Understanding Quantum Spacetime
Speaker: Clifford V. Johnson
Date: 2024-04-18
Watch Talk
The Search for Quantum Gravity
Speaker: Shiraz Minwalla
Date: 2023-02-15
Watch Talk
Why Face Masks Work
Speaker: Eberhard Bodenschatz
Date: 2022-10-19
Watch Talk
Lessons From Other Viruses: How Pandemics Start and End
Speaker: Richard Neher 
Date: 2022-04-27
Watch Talk
Stars: The Ultimate Laboratory for Modern Physics
Speaker: Pascale Garaud
Date: 2022-04-07
Watch Talk
The Radiant Universe: The Story of Electromagnetic Waves
Speaker: Ted Jacobson
Date: 2020-10-07
Watch Talk
The Renaissance of Quantum Biology
Speaker: K. Birgitta Whaley
Date: 2020-06-18
Watch Talk
The String Landscape, the Swampland, and Our Universe
Speaker: Cumrun Vafa
Date: 2020-02-26
Watch Talk
From Magnetic Cats to Artificial Intelligence: the Circular Technological Revolution of Spintronics
Speaker: Jairo Sinova
Date: 2019-10-30
Watch Talk
Fundamental Physics and the Fifth Dimension
Speaker: Raman Sundrum
Date: 2019-07-10
Watch Talk
Quantum Theory of the Classical
Speaker: Wojciech Hubert Zurek
Date: 2019-05-29
Watch Talk