Listen to exciting, non-technical talks on some of the most interesting developments in astronomy and space science. Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. Speakers include a wide range of noted scientists, explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The series is organized and moderated by Foothill's astronomy instructor emeritus Andrew Fraknoi and jointly sponsored by the Foothill College Physical Science, Math, and Engineering Division, the SETI Institute, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the University of California Observatories (including the Lick Observatory.)
http://youtube.com/svastronomylectures
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 2 days 10 hours 50 minutes
episode 3: Our Boldest Effort to Answer our Oldest Question: Breakthrough-Listen Search for Intelligent Life
For centuries, humans have gazed at the night sky and wondered if any intelligent life forms like us might be out there. In 2015, the Breakthrough Foundation gave a $100 million grant to the University of California at Berkeley to undertake the most comprehensive search for signals from an extra-terrestrial civilization. Dr...
episode 2: Spacetime Symphony: Gravitational Waves from Merging Black Holes
Talk by Dr. Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University)
Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. They travel at the speed of light, but are much harder to detect than light waves. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) received the first direct gravitational wave signals. The event that produced them was the merger of two distant and massive black holes that were in mutual orbit. Prof...
episode 6: 100 Years of Einstein's Relativity (And How it Underlies Our Modern Understanding of the Universe)
With Dr. Jeffrey Bennett (University of Colorado)
2015 marked the 100th anniversary of Einstein's completion of his General Theory of Relativity, the comprehensive theory of space, time, and gravity. In everyday language, Dr. Bennett explains the basic ideas of Einstein's work (both his special and general theories) and shows how Einstein's remarkable ideas are being confirmed today by a range of astronomical observations...
episode 2: Spacetime Symphony: Gravitational Waves from Merging Black Holes
With Dr. Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University)
Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. They travel at the speed of light, but are much, much harder to detect than light waves. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) found the first direct gravitational wave signals. The event that produced them was the merger of two distant and massive black holes that were in mutual orbit. Prof...
episode 2: Space Weather and the Question of Human Survivability (with Dr. Tom Berger)
The Sun can unleash violent “space weather” -- storms that can radiate X-rays and even gamma rays into space, send giant clouds of magnetic plasma slamming into the Earth and other planets, and spray firehoses of charged particles throughout interplanetary space. On Earth, we are mostly protected from the Sun’s wrath by our magnetic field and atmosphere, but astronauts venturing to the Moon and Mars will be vulnerable to these potentially deadly solar storms. Dr...
episode 5: Is Anyone out There: The Hundred-Million Dollar "Breakthrough: Listen" Project
with Dr. Dan Werthimer of the University of California, Berkeley
What is the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe and how might we detect signals from alien civilizations? Dr. Werthimer describes current and future projects searching for such signals, including the new $100-million Breakthrough Prize Foundation "Listen" project to "tune in" on messages that civilizations around other stars might be sending out...
episode 2: A Planet for Goldilocks: Kepler and the Search for Living Worlds
With Dr. Natalie Batalha (NASA, Kepler Mission Project Scientist)
NASA's Kepler Mission launched in 2009 with the objective of finding "Goldilocks planets" orbiting other stars like our Sun -- those that are not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The space telescope opened our eyes to the many terrestrial-sized planets that populate the galaxy (including several right in our neighborhood,) as well as to exotic worlds unlike anything that exists in the solar system...
episode 1: The Fast Radio Sky: A New Window on the Violent Universe
In this episode, Dr. Victoria Kaspi (McGill University) introduces us to a brand-new mystery in the skies -- superfast bursts of radio waves whose source is still unknown. These energetic bursts come from all over the sky (and all over the universe,) pack a huge amount of energy, and typically last a few thousandths of a second. Like a detective in the middle of a case, Dr...
episode 3: Colliding Neutron Stars, Gravity Waves, and the Origin of the Heavy Elements
with Prof. Eliot Quataert (University of California, Berkeley)
In the previous decade, one third of the world's astronomers became involved in a single project -- observing a distant and violent event, when two "star corpses" called neutron stars collided and exploded. This represented the first time in the history of astronomy that a cosmic event was observed with both gravity waves (first predicted by Einstein) and light...
episode 4: When Mars Was Like Earth: Five Years of Exploration with the Curiosity Rover
Speaker: Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
For five years, Curiosity explored Gale Crater, one of the most intriguing locations on Mars -- once the site of an ancient lake. In this talk, the mission's Project Scientist discussed what the rover was capable of and the many things it discovered on and about the red planet...