Astronomy on Tap: Galaxies and Pulsars Explained

Astronomy on Tap this evening was blessed with two very effective speakers: Dr. Louis Abramson, a postdoc at UCLA, and Anna Ho, a graduate student at Caltech.  Louis used a particularly novel means of describing how galaxies form, evolve, and die by comparing them to how humans are born, live our lives, and die.  This analogy held particularly well in talking about how the environment in which one lives affects one's overall life, whether it's in a big city (galaxy cluster) or in a rural area (void).  

Anna talked about pulsars, the end point of massive stars, and how we detect them with a variety of instruments.  She discussed the history of these exotic objects, and how they were initially thought to be alien signals!  Overall it was a great talk followed with lots of questions!

We had our usual quiz afterwards, and I guess I made the quiz too easy, since we had 6 people get 10/10!  I had to use a tie-breaker question to narrow down the winners to give adequate prizes.  Thanks, everyone for coming!

--Cameron

Lecture & Stargazing: The Science of Star Trek

   Tonight was a unique talk topic targeting the science of the fictional Star Trek universe given by Mike Wong, a planetary science superstar graduate student.  He even created his own poster for our event, which is without a doubt better than the one I produced for it!

   Mike touched on all sorts of Star Trek lore and its basis in our own understanding of science and astrophysics throughout the show's history.  He described the Drake Equation, the principle governing how many intelligent civilizations may exist in our Universe today, and what it meant for the premise of having a Federation of Planets by Gene Roddenberry.  Mike discussed the premise that in the future our society won't be driven by the acquisition of wealth, but on more altruistic goals.  He touched on the twin planets of Remus and Romulus and how realistic these worlds are, now that we have some understanding of planetary evolution.  Overall, this was one of the best talks we've ever had, and it was a pleasure working with Mike.

Photos courtesy of Bob Paz (http://www.bobpaz.com/)

Afterwards, we hosted a Panel Q&A made up of not just scientists, but scientists knowledgeable (and fans) of Star Trek.  So there were a variety of questions regarding the Star Trek Universe in addition to our normal scientific questions.  Our panel was made up of current and former graduate students in the Planetary Sciences department, who were able to handle all of the questions well, in addition to injecting humor.  It made for a very entertaining evening!  Thanks everyone for coming!