Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures

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 everyone.  (Recorded in 2015)

Dr. Jeffrey Bennett is the lead author of one the most popular introductory astronomy textbooks, and has written a number of books for children as well as for teachers. He is considered one of the leading educators in the field of astronomy.

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 Colorado) discusses our current understanding of the interplanetary space environment, describes some extreme space weather events in history, and examines how well we can currently predict space weather and its impacts.  Recorded Dec. 7, 2022.

Tom Berger is the Executive Director of the University of Colorado’s Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center, which combines traditional space physics research with technology and education to bridge the wide gap between research on the Sun and operational space weather forecasting. He was formerly the director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, helped develop the world’s largest solar telescope on the island of Maui (the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope), and has been a co-investigator on international missions to study changes in the Sun’s magnetic field.

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 for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI).  
Dr. Werthimer was one of the founders of the SETI@home project, which analyzed data from the world's largest radio telescope using the desktop computers and cell phones of millions of volunteers.
Recorded on March 15, 2017

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 overview of the science legacy of the Kepler Mission and other key planet discoveries (including some results that were then only a few weeks old).  She also gives a preview of planet-finding missions to come.  

Recorded Nov. 8, 2017

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) have been revealing tantalizing new aspects of these bursts, without yet giving us a solution to their ultimate cause.  She shares both the thrills and frustrations of a new phenomenon in science, still in the process of being explored.  Recorded on Oct. 19, 2022.

Victoria Kaspi is the inaugural director of the McGill Space Institute and holds the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology at McGill University.  She is the winner of the 2021 Shaw Prize in astronomy and the 2022 Albert Einstein World Award in Science.

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 astronomy."  Dr. Quataert gives a non-technical history of how we are now able to find gravity waves, what happens during such a merger, and why we now believe that much of the gold, platinum, uranium and other heavy elements in the universe is assembled in such "star corpse" mergers.  Recorded Jan. 24, 2018.

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 and flowing water on its surface. (Recorded Feb. 28, 2018)

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 the danger of asteroid impacts.

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, straight from the source, with insight into what it's like to be part of a  planetary mission that goes to a destination never before visited.  (Recorded May 15, 2018)

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 she provides some clear guidelines on what we will need to do, as a species, to continue living on Earth for as long as our durable planet can provide an inviting home for us.  (Recorded May 25, 2022)

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 the collision of nearby galaxies.

Speaker: Dr. Claire Max (University of California Observatories)
Oct. 3, 2018

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 elsewhere and what parts might be unique to our planet. 

Charles Lineweaver is an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Research School of Earth Science. His research areas include exoplanetology (the statistical analysis of exoplanets and their habitability), cosmobiology (using our new knowledge of cosmology to constrain life in the Universe) and the study of cancer. He recently completed an online video course at: arewealone.us. Dr. Lineweaver earned a BA in history from the State University of New York at Binghamton, an MA in English from Brown University, a BS is physics from Ludwig Maximillian's University in Munich, and a PhD in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. 

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. But had these scientists been deceived by a galactic mirage? In this popular-level talk, cosmologist Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2’s detection and the ensuing scientific drama. He provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize actually hampers scientific progress by encouraging speed and competition while punishing inclusivity, collaboration, and bold innovation.   

 Dr. Keating is s a cosmologist at the University of California San Diego and Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory collaboration in Chile.  He is the author of a popular book, Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor.

This talk was recorded on Nov. 14, 2018.

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. Penelope Boston, NASA Ames Research Center, takes us on a tour of the some of the most spectacular caves under the Earth and the unusual life-forms they harbor, and considers how the lessons they teach us can be applied to the exploration of the Solar System, especially the icy moons of the giant planets.
(Recorded Feb. 27, 2019)

In this illustrated talk, Dr. Burgasser explains what happens when a newly forming star doesn't have "what it takes" to produce energy in its core in an ongoing way.  This results in "failed stars" or brown dwarfs -- objects that were predicted in theory, but only discovered in the 1990's.   Today, many thousands of these brown dwarfs are known, spanning a wide range of temperatures and masses, and occupying a unique niche at the intersection of stars and planets. Dr. Burgasser discusses how such faint objects are discovered, highlights their exceptional properties, and describes what this (mostly) invisible population can tell us about the formation and history of our Milky Way Galaxy.   Recorded March 9, 2022.

Adam Burgasser is a professor of Physics at the University of California,  San Diego, and an astrophysicist who studies the coldest stars, brown dwarfs, and extrasolar planets. Prof. Burgasser defined the “T spectral class” of brown dwarfs as a graduate student; and is one of the co-discoverers of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanetary system, a system of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting an object at boundary of the star/brown dwarf divide. 

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.  Charon’s surface also has a region of plains where icy materials may once have flowed and smoothed over the fractures present elsewhere on its surface.  Dr. Beyer is your expert guide through this story of formation and change in the frozen reaches of the outer Solar System.

Dr. Ross Beyer is a Planetary Scientist with the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute and at NASA's  Ames Research Center. 

This talk was given May 15, 2019

In this nontechnical talk, illustrated with the latest images and video, Dr. Thaller asks what makes a world habitable?  What creates and sustains an environment friendly to life?  She then discusses the history of life on Earth and what we are learning about our planet, and our neighbors Mars and Venus from such missions as the Parker Solar Probe, the laboratories aboard our Mars rovers, and the probes that have explored asteroids and comets, including one that is bringing samples back to Earth as we speak. Finally, she touches on the way new instruments, like the James Webb Space Telescope, will help us learn if there are habitable worlds around other stars.

Dr. Michelle Thaller is the liaison between the Office of Communication and the Science Directorate at NASA Goddard. Outside her work at NASA, she has appeared in many television science programs, including How the Universe Works and Space’s Deepest Secrets.

Decades after we last set foot on the Moon, and several years after the Space Shuttle was retired, space activity is finally leaving the doldrums.  Permanent bases on the Moon and Mars are now within reach, and a new Space Race is brewing, with Asian countries ascendant. Dr. Impey (University of Arizona) reviews the history and landmarks of the international space program, gives a snapshot of the current situation, and plots the trajectory of the future of space travel.  Recorded on Feb. 15, 2017.  (Dr. Impey has written a book with the same title as this talk.)

 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. Kevin Hand (of the Jet Propulsion Lab) explains the science behind our understanding of these worlds, with a special focus on Jupiter’s intriguing moon Europa, which is a top priority for future NASA missions.   Dr. Hand is also the author of a popular-level book "Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space."  (Recorded Apr. 10, 2019.)

Dr. Hand is a planetary scientist at JPL in Pasadena, California and the Director of its Ocean Worlds Lab. His research focuses on the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the solar system with an emphasis on Europa.  From 2011 to 2016, Hand served as Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at JPL. His work has brought him to the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, the sea ice near the North Pole, the depths of the Earth’s oceans, and to the glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Dr. Hand was a scientist onboard James Cameron’s 2012 dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and he was part of a 2003 IMAX expedition to hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

The NASA Kepler mission revealed that our Galaxy is teeming with planetary systems and that Earth-sized planets are common.  However, most of the planets detected by Kepler orbit stars too faint to permit detailed study. The NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS,) launched in 2018, is finding hundreds of small planets orbiting stars that are much closer and brighter.  Dr. Dressing (Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley) describes the TESS mission and explain how analyses of the TESS planets allows us to probe the composition of small planets, investigate the formation of planetary systems, and set the stage for the next phase of exoplanet exploration: the quest for the signatures of life in the atmospheres of strange new worlds.

The Vera Rubin Observatory will house a survey telescope that will image the night sky faster and deeper than ever before. Its camera, at 3.6 Gigapixels, will be the biggest digital camera ever built. The Rubin Observatory will be able to image the entire visible sky every few nights, and build up, over 10 years, a 900-frame full color movie of the deep night sky. This will enable a wide variety of scientific explorations, from the outer reaches of our Solar System, through our Milky Way Galaxy and its dark matter halo, and out into the extra-galactic universe, where we hope to see new types of cosmic explosions and the weird effects of the mysterious Dark Energy.  Dr. Phil Marshall (of Stanford University) gives a guided tour of the  Observatory, describes the planned sky survey, discusess the challenges of doing astronomy at petabyte scale, and shows how we can all take part in Rubin's voyage of discovery.
 
 

Prof. Jim Bell (of Arizona State University), who is a key leader in projects to take images with NASA's rovers on Mars, discusses the history and current state of our exploration of the red planet.  He summarizes the scientific findings from the Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance missions. He puts each mission into the larger context of the questions we are asking -- both about Mars today and about ancient Mars, which could have been far more hospitable for life.

A bird that mimicked a black hole. The astronomer that discovered microwave ovens. A telescope that got shot. The science of astronomy is filled with true stories (and tall tales) of the adventures and misadventures that accompany our exploration of the universe. Dr. Levesque, who interviewed over 100 astronomers for her well-reviewed popular book, The Last Stargazers,  takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of life as a professional astronomer. We learn about some of the most powerful telescopes in the world and their cutting-edge discoveries, meet the people behind the science, and explore the crucial role of human curiosity and innovation in the past, present, and future of scientific discovery.  (Recorded on Oct. 20, 2021)

Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington.  She has observed for upwards of fifty nights on many of the planet’s largest telescopes and flown over the Antarctic stratosphere in an experimental aircraft for her research. 

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.  And she discusses projects that are underway and are planned to learn more about the possibility of intelligent life among the stars.  The talk also celebrated the publication of the book "Making Contact" (by Sarah Scoles) about Jill Tarter's life and work.

By measuring the rapid orbits of the stars near the center of our galaxy, Dr. Andrea Ghez of UCLA and her colleagues have moved the case for a supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy from a possibility to a certainty.  She reports on her pioneering observations of stars near our galaxy's center (that orbit the monster black hole) and discusses some of the surprising results this work has led to.  The talk was recorded in January 2017; in 2020, Dr. Ghez won the Nobel Prize in physics for this work.

After encountering Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft, for the first time flew by a member of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune.  This particular object, informally named “Ultimate Thule” (meaning the farthest place beyond the known world,) turned out to be a “contact binary” – two smaller icy worlds stuck together. Dr. Jeff Moore, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center,  shares an insider’s view (with great images) of how the mission got there and what we learned at Ultima Thule.  This talk was recorded Oc.t 19, 2019.  Since then this object has been given the official name Arrokoth.

Black holes are one of the most remarkable predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity: so much material is compressed into such a small volume that nothing, not even light, can escape.  In Spring 2019, the world-wide Event Horizon Telescope released the first real picture of gas around a massive black hole and the “shadow” it makes as the gas swirls into the black hole.  Dr. Quataert (University of California, Berkeley) describes how these pioneering observations were made and what they have taught us about black holes.

Recorded on Jan. 22, 2020

Dr. Adam Frank (U of Rochester) first discusses the history of our search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI), including the Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, and the searches for radio messages from other civilizations that have taken place since 1960.  He then explains how new research and funding is expanding our thinking about the ways we might find evidence of intelligent life among the stars.  He focuses on "techno-signatures" -- ways in which we might identify signs of alien technology.  Dr. Frank summarizes the work in papers he has published and the research and ideas of scientists around the world.  (Recorded May 26, 2021.)

Dr. Brown (whose discovery of dwarf planet Eris led to the reclassification of Pluto) discusses the history of planetary discovery (and demotion), why we think a new, larger Planet 9 is on the verge of being found, and the techniques that we are using to try to find this very faint body lurking in the far reaches of our planetary system.  This was recorded Nov. 11, 2020. 

May 22, 2021,  Dr. Janna Levin (Columbia University's Barnard College)
Dr. Levin helps us to understand, and to find delight in, black holes – perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists. She takes us on an exploratory tour of the neighborhood of a black hole, and help us feel the visceral experience of encountering black holes of different masses.  The title of the talk is also the title of her recently published popular-level book.  (Originally scheduled for April, this talk had technical problems, and was re-recorded successfully in May.)

Lick Observatory, the first continuously inhabited mountain-top observatory in the world, has been doing ground-breaking research since its opening in 1888.  30 years after Lick Observatory established itself as a leader in astronomical research, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic hit the United States.  Research, while hampered by the conditions at the time, continued with the dedicated efforts of some of the notable astronomers of the day.  In 2020, the Observatory was hit by both the current pandemic and one of the worst Northern California wildfires in history.  Dr. Gates compares how astronomers in 1918 and today have coped with these challenges.  [By the way, the public can help these efforts; go to http://bit.ly/lickfriends ]  

Dr. Elinor Gates is a staff astronomer at Lick Observatory.  Her current research interests are studying quasars and their host galaxies, discovering dust-obscured quasars, and measuring the masses of central black holes in distant active galaxies.  Asteroid (2650) Elinor is named in Dr. Gates’ honor.

Astronomers today understand that the universe is full of a mysterious substance they call “dark matter” (because it doesn’t give off any light or other radiation we can detect.)  Dr. Tom Shutt (of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) discusses the motivation behind the multi-decade, world-wide effort to test the idea that dark matter is in the form of particles as small as a neutrino but as heavy as an atom.  He describes the experiment he is involved with, that uses 7 tons of liquefied Xenon to measure how these particles interact with normal matter.

Nobel Physics Prize laureate, Dr. John Mather, explains how the early cosmos (whose precise characteristics he helped pin down) became our present-day universe of galaxies, stars, and planets.  Dr. Mather is the Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (which will be a much larger instrument than the Hubble when it is launched in late 2021).  He also discusses the history of the Webb telescope and how it is designed, and then suggests some of the exciting things this telescope will be able to do.  This was the Feb. 2021 Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture.