Onsdag 16. november kan du oppleve disse internasjonale kjente forskerne forelese i tilgjengelig stil i Store fysiske auditorium i Fysikkbygningen.
11:15: Robert Bindschadler: The Observing Revolution in Glaciology: Becoming Super-Scientist
Observations of earth’s great ice sheets have a much shorter history than observations of glaciers. However, modern technology, most notably satellite observations, has allowed scientists to rapidly learn about the state and behavior of all the ice on the planet, regardless of its location. This increased capability has been well timed because ice is changing as rapidly as any component of our familiar environment and the consequences of these changes extend far beyond the polar latitudes and high elevations where ice resides. It is an exciting time to observe ice, but the conclusions drawn from these observations are troubling. The pace of scientific investigation is increasing as society asks ever more urgent questions about our future. The presentation will follow the evolution of glaciological observations from space, its impact on our understanding of ice-sheet behavior and what we might expect in the near future.
Dr. Robert Bindschadler was a senior fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and has been an active field researcher in the Antarctic for over 25 years. He is a past president of the International Glaciological Society, chairs the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative, has led 14 expeditions to Antarctica and has participated in numerous other expeditions around the world including Greenland. His work revolves around the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets using remote sensing technology.
13:15: Robert Kirshner: Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe: Einstein's Blunder Undone
Exploding stars halfway across the universe reveal an extraordinary fact: the expansion of the universe is speeding up. We attribute this to a dark energy that acts to make the universe spring apart. The resulting picture is a truly strange one: most of the universe is in the form of dark matter we cannot see and dark energy we do not yet understand. Only 4% of the mass-energy of the universe is in the form of atoms that can make stars, galaxies, planets, and people. This talk will show how we know the universe is accelerating and sketch how today's idea of dark energy resembles Einstein's cosmological constant, an idea he invented in 1916 and discarded in 1931.
Robert Kirshner is Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University. A 1970 graduate of Harvard College, Kirshner received his Ph. D. from Caltech and recently received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Chicago. His work with the High-Z Supernova team helped uncover the fact that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Kirshner shared in the 2007 Gruber Prize in Cosmology for that work. Kirshner won the 2011 Heineman Prize for "his sustained and enduring contributions to our understanding of supernovae and cosmology." A frequent public lecturer on astronomy, he teaches a large undergraduate course at Harvard called "The Energetic Universe" and is the author of popular-level book The Extravagant Universe: exploding stars, dark energy, and the accelerating cosmos.
14:15: David Southwood: The ABC of Solar Terrestrial Science
Three men, Alfvén, Birkeland and Chapman, laid the foundations for our present understanding how the Sun directly interacts with the Earth’s outer atmosphere. Of these, it was the Norwegian, Birkeland, doubtless inspired by the Northern Lights (or aurora), who first began the work in Oslo (then called Kristiania) over a century ago. The talk will start with some early history including the intense disagreements between, on one side, the Scandinavian scientists (A and B) and, on the other, the Briton (C) and the school he founded, echoes of which remain even today. Today, the aurora is seen now as a very overt feature of a complex dynamical system linking the Earth and Sun. The resolution of the arguments from long ago taken with the revelations offered by the space age have created a new science. The science is now well enough developed that there can even be regular predictions for “space weather”. This is increasingly important globally as we become more dependent on electronic systems and space-based services. However, at the same time, the science has given discoveries that have a cosmic significance, illuminating processes in astrophysical environments far from our planet.
David Soutwood has been involved in space missions and space exploration since 1966. He has a long experience of public communication about space and space exploration, even taking par tin BBC coverage of the Apollo programme.
Foredragene vil bli holdt på engelsk.
Velkommen!
Arrangør
Institutt for teoretisk astrofysikk