Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures

March 7, 2007

Dr. Janice Voss (NASA Ames Research Center)

Listen (mp3 file, 17.5 MB)

Dr. Voss, who has logged 49 days in space (traveling almost 19 million miles in 779 Earth orbits) discusses her work in space and what it’s like flying on the Shuttle as a scientist. She then talks about NASA’s upcoming Kepler mission, which will use a telescope in space to search for “transits” — when a planet orbiting another star moves in front of its star and blocks its light. Although a planet might only block a tiny fraction of the light from a star, that decrease in brightness is enough to give a clear signal that the planet is there. With this mission, scientists hope to be able to find not only Jupiter and Saturn-sized planets, but also those as small as Earth. At the end, Dr. Voss answers a number of audience questions about both aspects of her work.

January 24, 2007

Dr. Bruce Margon (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Listen (mp3 file, 24 MB)

The Hubble Space Telescope has circled the Earth 15 times every day for more than 16 years. Dr. Margon, who was until recently the Associate Director for Science for the Hubble, describes the most important discoveries made with the telescope and how it can show us new details of the universe from the solar system to the most distant reaches of space. In addition, he briefly discusses the future of the Hubble and some interesting public reactions to it.

November 8, 2006

Dr. Dale Cruikshank (NASA Ames)

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Dr. Cruikshank reviews what we knew about Pluto (including its atmosphere, of which he was the co-discoverer), why Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet in the fall of 2006, and what the New Horizons spacecraft may reveal about this distant world in the next decade.

October 4, 2006

Dr. Alex Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley)

Listen (mp3 file, 24.7 MB)

In 1998, observations of very distant exploding stars provided intriguing evidence that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up with time, rather than slowing down due to gravity as expected. Today, new and completely independent observations strongly support this amazing conclusion. Over the largest scales of space, our Universe seems to be dominated by a repulsive “dark energy,” stretching the very fabric of space itself. Dr. Filippenko, who is a leader in the group that has made some of these remarkable observations, gives us a progress report on our “runaway universe” and then answers a host of audience questions about the overall behavior of the universe.

May 19, 2005

Dr. Nathalie Cabrol (SETI Institute)

Listen (mp3 file, 18.3 MB)

Dr. Nathalie Cabrol is a planetary geologist who is a member of the Science Team for the Mars Exploration Rover mission. She specializes in exploring regions of Earth that resemble Mars (including Licancabur, the highest lake on our planet). She was instrumental in the selection of one of the landing sites for the Mars rovers and is busily analyzing images and data from the mission. In this 2005 lecture, she gave an early progress report on the work of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and some of their discoveries about the red planet.

April 20, 2005

Dr. Frank Drake (SETI Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz)

Listen (mp3 file, 16.9 MB)

In 1961, Dr. Drake proposed an intriguing method of estimating the number of intelligent life-forms out there that we might communicate with, now called the Drake Equation. In this talk, Dr. Drake provides a modern update on estimates for the existence of “E.T.” He draws on new ideas and new observations (including the discovery of surprising planets around other stars), which have helped astronomers refine both the targets where they search for life and the methods they use.