Previous Lectures
 Thursday, May 22, 2008
Unveiling a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy
An Evening with Professor Andrea Ghez
Astronomy Department at University of California, Los Angeles
at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
More than a quarter century ago, it was suggested that galaxies such as our own Milky Way may harbor massive, though possibly dormant, central black holes. Definitive proof, for or against, the existence of a massive central black hole lies in the assessment of the distribution of matter in the center of the Galaxy. The motion of the stars in the vicinity of a black hole offers a way to determine this distribution. Based on 10 years of high resolution imaging, Dr. Ghez's team has moved the case for a supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center from a possibility to a certainty. Additionally, spectroscopy has revealed that the stars orbiting in such close proximity are apparently massive and young; the origin of these stars is difficult to explain, given the strong tidal forces, and may provide key insight into the growth of the central black hole.
Dr. Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, was named in Discover magazine's 20th anniversary issue (October 2000) as one of the "20 Young Scientists to Watch". Her research focuses on the origin and early life of stars and planets. She has demonstrated the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, with a mass 4 million times that of our sun. Her honors and awards include the Amelia Earhart Award, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Annie Jump Cannon Award, a Sloan Fellowship, a Packard Fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award from the American Physical Society, and, most recently, election to the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and University of Arizona's Aaronson Award. Ghez earned her PhD from Caltech, her BS from MIT, and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Arizona's Steward. She joined UCLA's faculty in 1994.
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe
An Evening with Professor Alex Filippenko
Astronomy Department at University of California, Berkeley
In 1998, observations of very distant exploding stars (supernovae) provided intriguing evidence that the expansion of the Universe is now speeding up, 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" of unknown origin, stretching the very fabric of space itself faster and faster with time.
A UCSB CCS Physics program alumnus, Alex Filippenko received his PhD in Astronomy from Caltech in 1984 and joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1986. He has coauthored about 500 scientific publications and has won numerous prizes for his research. He has won the top teaching awards at Berkeley, and in 2006 was named the Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions. He has produced a 96-lecture astronomy video course with The Teaching Company and has coauthored an award-winning astronomy textbook.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
"The Search for Another Earth: Looking for Life in All the Right Places"
An Evening with Dr. Alan Dressler
Astronomer, The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
Astronomers have joined the growing number of scientists who seek to understand the origins of life on Earth and to look for life beyond Earth. Studies of Earth's extreme environments suggests that life here may have arisen in conditions that were hostile compared to the land and oceans of Earth today. However, because these difficult conditions may have been common during the formation of planets around nearly every star in our Galaxy, the development of life as we know it may not be a rare event. The number of planets discovered around our neighbor stars is growing, and research has begun to address basic questions: How common are Solar Systems like our own? How common are rocky worlds like our Earth? If Earth-like worlds are common, future space missions will be able to study them in enough detail to reveal if they are suitable for life, indeed, if life is actually present.
Dr. Alan Dressler is famed for his studies of distant galaxies and of the large-scale structure of the universe. In addition to his scientific research, Dr. Dressler authored the popular book Voyage to the Great Attractor: Exploring Intergalactic Space. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996, and won the Newton Lacey Pierce Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 1983. In 1999 NASA awarded him the Public Service Medal. He is a member of the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronograph Science and technology definition team.
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