Next Tuesday, May 26, 2015 Cafe Scientifique, in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.]), will be hosting a talk on quantum gravity topics (from the May 11, 2015 announcement),

Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Andrew DeBenedictis.  The title of his talk is:

Black holes, wormholes, warp-drives, and time-machines: What does science have to say about these?

There are many fantastic devices from physics in books and in movies such as Interstellar. These concepts capture the imagination but are generally in the realm of science fiction. However, it may be surprising to learn that there is some real (albeit rather far-fetched) science behind these phenomena. This talk will introduce these topics and present a non-mathematical introduction to the physical theories that govern them. We will discuss what is possible (and even likely), what is highly unlikely, and why it is so.

Unfortunately, DeBenedictis doesn’t seem to have supplied a biography for inclusion with the announcement and there is singularly little information about him online. He’s a senior lecturer in the Dept. of Physics at Simon Fraser University and this is his personal page.