Apr. 17, 2024 In this talk, physicist and popular author Paul Halpern (St. Joseph's College) examines the history of the concept of a multiverse in science, and discusses the ideas by Einstein and other noted physicists that have led scientist today to take the notion of multiple universes seriously.  He also contrasts the scientific view of a multiverse to the picture we get in popular culture (think Marvel movies) and notes how significantly the two differ.  Dr. Halpern is the author of a...

With Dr. Leonard Susskind (Stanford University) Black holes, the collapsed remnants of the largest stars, provide a remarkable laboratory where the frontier concepts of our understanding of nature are tested at their extreme limits. For more than two decades, Professor Susskind and a Dutch colleague had a running battle with Stephen Hawking about the implications of black hole theory for our understanding of reality — a battle that he has described in his well-reviewed book The Black Hole...

A Non-technical Talk by Dr. Jessica Lu (University of California, Berkeley) on March 13, 2024 The population of black holes, objects left over from dead stars,  is almost entirely unexplored. Only about two dozen black holes are confidently known in our Galaxy. As a result, some of the most basic properties of black holes remain unknown, including the true number of black holes in the Galaxy, their masses and sizes, and how the black holes were formed.  Dr. Lu discusses how she and other...

Speaker: Dr. Brian Lantz (Stanford University) Feb. 7, 2024 Measuring gravitational waves is a revolutionary new way to do astronomy.  They were predicted by Einstein, but it was not until 2015, that LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) first detected one of these waves. They were tiny ripples in space itself, generated by the collision of two black holes. Since then, LIGO and its international partners have measured nearly 100 signals. Dr. Lantz explains what we can...

Dr. Laura Schaefer (Stanford University): Water is everywhere. Its atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, are the first and fifth most abundant elements in the universe. Water is found in abundance in many environments; it finds its way into planets of all shapes and sizes, where it modifies the properties of everything it touches. Water is crucial to life, both as a habitat and as a solvent. But it also has many other roles in the evolution of habitable and uninhabitable environments on a planetary...

A Talk by Dr. Robert Jedicke (U of Hawaii) Oct. 11, 2023 Near-Earth objects present both an existential threat to human civilization and an extraordinary opportunity to help our exploration and expansion across the solar system. Dr. Jedicke explains that the risk of a sudden, civilization-altering collision with an asteroid or comet has markedly diminished in recent decades -- due to diligent astronomical surveys -- but a significant level of danger persists. At the same time, remarkable...

June 2012 Frank Drake (1930-2022) was known as the "father of SETI science" -- he was the scientist who conducted the first radio survey for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, and came up with the formula for estimating the likelihood of such civilizations, now called the Drake Equation.  In June 2012, the SETI Institute sponsored a three-day public event called SETICon. One highlight of the program was an interview with Drake (who served as the founding President of the Institute...

with Dr. Eugene Chiang (University of California, Berkeley) June 21, 2023 We now know that our solar system is but one of countless others. Where did all these planets come from? What are their fates, and ours? Dr. Chiang describes the life cycle of planets, how they are born and die, and how they are born again. The story combines the latest observations from a wide range of telescope with our evolving theoretical understanding of the role planets play in the development of the cosmos.

North America will be treated to two eclipses of the Sun in the 2023-24 school year: an annular eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023 and a total eclipse on Apr. 8, 2024.  Some 500 million people will be in a position to see at least a partial eclipse on each date. Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi (Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco) discusses the cause of eclipses (and why Earth's eclipses are unique), the circumstances of each coming eclipse and where each will be visible, plus how to view eclipses...

Dr. Alex Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley) Mar. 8, 2023 We have a new supersensitive eye in the cosmic sky. Parked nearly one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is 100 times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST observes at the red to the mid-infrared parts of the spectrum, offering new insights into a vast array of objects and processes -- including solar system formation, star birth and death, galaxy evolution, and, perhaps, the...

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. Steve Croft, of the University of California, Berkeley, SETI Center,  describes the project, introduces the many radio telescopes around the world it is using in the...

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. Cominsky presents an...

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.  He concludes with four reasons why relativity should matter to...

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. Tom Berger (University of...

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.  He shows how new technologies are revolutionizing the search...

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.  Dr. Batalha gives an...

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. Kaspi fills us in on the story of how new observations (especially with the CHIME telescope project which she heads)...

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.   We now call this event the birth of "multi-messenger...

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.  In particular, he fills us in on the evidence that ancient Mars, billions of years ago, was much more like the Earth -- with a thicker atmosphere...

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. Busch reviews the near-Earth asteroid population, programs to track and characterize such asteroids, and current efforts to address...

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.  Here is the story of path-breaking exploration and new science,...

Dr. Sandra Faber (University of California, Santa Cruz) Do Humans Have What it Takes to Thrive in this Universe? In this thought-provoking talk, cosmologist (and National Medal of Science winner) Dr. Sandra Faber takes a look at our cosmic origins, the future of the Earth as a habitable planet, and what humans need to do to thrive in the long-term future.  She draws some sobering conclusions from the laws of physics and the sustainability of our present-day use of energy and resources.  And...

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.  And she discusses how this technique is giving us sharper views of such cosmic events as...

In this talk, astrobiologist Charles Lineweaver discusses the history of life on Earth and what we can deduce from our understanding of the universe about the existence and history of life elsewhere.  He recounts the ongoing discovery of large numbers of exoplanets -- planets orbiting other stars -- and what we can learn from the varieties of planets that are being found.  He challenges us to think about what parts in the development of intelligent life on Earth would necessarily happen...