On an overcast afternoon in late April, physics professors and students crowded into a wood - paneled
lecture hall at Columbia University for a talk
by Nima Arkani - Hamed, a high - profile theorist visiting from the Institute for Advanced Study in nearby Princeton, N.J. With his dark, shoulder - length hair shoved behind his ears, Arkani - Hamed laid out the dual, seemingly contradictory implications of recent experimental results at the
Large Hadron Collider in Europe.
When not occupied
by external or hosted events, the Great
Hall is made accessible to students and faculty for
large lectures and recreational activities, including the school's annual Culture Show.
When they arrive early on Tuesday morning, the students are put
by the professor in a
large lecture hall and are seated so far apart from each other that, even if they tried, they had no chance to cheat.