Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures

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,  de...

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 me...

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...

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 Ma...

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 c...

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 nei...

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...

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 w...

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...

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 astero...

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...

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...

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 precis...

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 thin...

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...

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...

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...

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 f...

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...

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...

 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....

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 (Assi...

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 o...

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...

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-sc...