Life, the universe and everything will be up for discussion at the Cosmic Science Café at 7 p.m. Thursday in Tomanek Hall, room 106, on the Fort Hays State University campus.

Bharat Ratra, professor of physics at Kansas State University, will speak on dark matter, dark energy and the accelerating universe.

Ratra received his master's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, then went on to complete his doctoral degree at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif. His research focuses on developing and testing cosmological models for the large-scale matter and radiation distributions in the universe.

The Albertson Hall observatory will be opened to view the Orion Nebula and Jupiter following the program.

This Cosmic Science Cafe is sponsored by the FHSU Science and Mathematics Education Institute and the FHSU Physics Club. The event is free and open to the public.