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: A Sharper Image: Seeing Colliding Galaxies with Adaptive Optics (with Dr. Claire Max)
When light from space enters Earth’s atmosphere, it is distorted and displaced, something our eyes perceive as “twinkling.” Adaptive optics can remove a great deal of this distortion, essentially restoring much of the detail we’ve been robbed off in our view of the stars and galaxies. Dr. Max, a world-renowned pioneer in this technique, shows us how modern lasers allow her to do this very precisely...
episode 2: Cosmology and Ambition: Losing the Nobel Prize (with Dr. Brian Keating)
What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers using the powerful BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole thought they’d glimpsed evidence of the period of cosmic inflation at the beginning of time. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement, and Nobel whispers spread like wildfire...
episode 4: Planets Under Our Feet: The Caves on Earth, Mars, and Beyond (with Dr. Penelope Boston)
New exploration indicates that caves may be more common on rocky and icy worlds in our Solar System than we have thought in the past. Caves below the Earth show us a very different planet than the familiar one we experience on the surface. Each dark cave system has its own micro-organisms and distinctive mineral and chemical properties. Dr...
episode 5: Ocean Worlds in Our Solar System (with Dr. Kevin Hand)
Where is the best place to find living life beyond Earth? It may be that the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn harbor some of the most habitable real estate in our Solar System. Life loves liquid water and these moons have lots of it! Such oceans worlds have likely persisted for much of the history of the solar system, and as a result they are compelling targets for our exploration. Dr...
episode 6: Charon, Pluto’s Companion: What We’re Learning from New Horizons (with Dr. Ross Beyer)
Pluto’s large moon Charon turned out to be far more interesting than astronomers expected. Pluto was the star when the New Horizons probe flew by, but the features on Charon’s surface tell a fascinating tale of how icy worlds could form far from the gravitational influences of the giant planets. There is evidence of a world-wide sub-surface ocean early on, and of global expansion as that ocean froze solid...
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