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
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episode 1: Will the 21st Century be the Time we Discover Life Beyond Earth (with Dr. Jill Tarter)
Craig Venter & Daniel Cohen suggested that if the 20th century was the century of physics, the 21st century will be the century of biology on our planet. Jill Tarter believes that their idea will be extended beyond the surface of our world, and that we may soon have the first opportunity to study biology that developed on other worlds. In this lecture, recorded in 2017, she talks about her vision of the future of understanding life on Earth and beyond our planet...
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 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...
episode 5: Rubble Piles in the Sky: The Science, Exploration, and Danger of Near-Earth Asteroids
with Dr, Michael Busch (SETI Institute)
Near-Earth asteroids are a population of small bodies whose orbits around the Sun cross or come near our planet’s orbit. They turn out to be unusual physical environments: essentially rubble piles. They represent a natural hazard we ignore at our peril, because some of these bodies have the potential to impact Earth. Dr...
episode 6: Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto (with Alan Stern & David Grinspoon)
In July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto, revealing its surface to our view for the first time. In this program, Drs. Alan Stern and David Grinspoon give us an insider's view of how this complex mission came to be and what it discovered at the edge of our solar system. Their recent book (with the same title) tells the full story of the mission, its ground-breaking discoveries at Pluto, and where it's going next...
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