Our Astronomy Lecture Series Has a Million Views on YouTube

As regular readers may know, I have the pleasure of organizing and moderating a series of public talks at my college called the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures. Thanks to a generous anonymous donor, we are able to record, edit, and publish each talk on YouTube (now in High Definition). Yesterday, the counter at our YouTube channel passed one million views of the lectures from around the world!

Recent speakers have included Carolyn Porco, imaging team leader for the Cassini mission to Saturn; Robert Kirshner of Harvard and Alex Filippenko of Berkeley, both members of the teams that discovered, to everyone’s surprise, that the expansion of the universe is accelerating; Caleb Scharf of Columbia, explaining his book, "The Copernicus Complex," about humanity’s place in the cosmos; astronaut Ed Lu about discovering asteroids that threaten the Earth; and NASA’s Jeff Moore, from the New Horizons science team, explaining what we have discovered about Pluto this year.

Older lectures include Frank Drake explaining his current thinking about the Drake equation, Michael Brown (who discovered many of the Pluto-like dwarf planets out there) discussing "How I Killed Pluto...," Leonard Susskind on his battle with Stephen Hawking over black holes, and Helen Quinn on the mysteries of antimatter.

You can enjoy all the videos, free of charge or advertising, at:http://www.youtube.com/svastronomylectures

Even an astronomer like me, used to big numbers, is kind of impressed by a million views! I'm glad there are so many fans of astronomy out there. Or maybe, when people think about what's happening in the country and in the world right now, their thought have to escape into the larger universe to stay sane!

Science Fiction and Astronomy

As regular readers of my blog may know, I have a special interest in science fiction, and often recommend stories in my astronomy and physics classes. I even keep a webpage of science fiction stories that use accurate astronomy, at:http://www.astrosociety.org/scifi

Recently, I joined a writing group, and started writing science fiction myself. After receiving many eloquent rejection notes from some of the finest science fiction magazines, one of my stories was published in a small-press anthology about colonizing Mars, called "Building Red," edited by Janet Cannon.

This coming weekend, I will be a guest speaker at BayCon 2016, a science fiction convention in the San Francisco Bay Area (in San Mateo, to be precise.) I have spoken at such conventions before, but this will be my first time speaking not only as an astronomer, but as a science fiction author. The full program and information is on the website:http://baycon.org.  Please say hello if you stop by.

For those of you not in the area, I discussed my story (and scientists who write science fiction) on the syndicated radio show “Big Picture Science” with host Seth Shostak this week. Here is the page:http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/science-fiction . Note the things in red are links on this page. If you click on the red “Science Fiction” under download, you will be taken to the audio for the show. The interview that mentions my story starts at about 19 minutes into the show and ends at about 30 minutes into the show.

Seth will also be a speaker at BayCon, as will several NASA scientists. I will even be on a panel on scientific science fiction with two of my favorite science fiction authors, Paul Preuss and G. D. Nordley.

For a person whose life has been mostly about teaching the facts of science, it's a lot of fun to be able to speculate in the realm of fiction. So many of my students tell me they were drawn to astronomy by a science fiction story, TV show, or movie they saw; so I know fiction can help draw new audiences toward astronomy. And with the political news the way it is these days, we all need to find ways to take our minds off our home planet and think about the "bigger picture" of the universe.

Happy Belated Einstein's Birthday (Get Ready for Spring)

Yesterday was Albert Einstein's birthday and this coming Thursday will be the Spring Equinox, when the length of the day and the length of the night are roughly equal, and we move from winter to spring in the Earth's northern hemisphere. This is always a good time of year to think fresh thoughts, something Einstein was especially good at.

At Foothill College, where I have the privilege of teaching, this is the week we begin registering students and community members for our spring quarter, which starts in April. This spring, I get to teach my evening Physics 12 class, nicknamed "Everything You've Wanted to Know about Einstein and his Work (without Math) but Were Afraid to Ask..."

If you, or someone you know, might be interested and are close enough to Los Altos, California to come to an evening class, I invite you to check it out.

Although Einstein died in 1955, his work continues to capture the imagination of both scientists and the public. In the last few years, astronomers have found new confirmation of some of Einstein’s most bizarre ideas -- including time itself slowing down under the right circumstances and gravity acting like the distorting mirrors of an amusement park. Huge black holes have been found, some of them having “eaten” enough material to make billions of Suns.

In the Physics 12 course, we explain all these ideas and discoveries in everyday language -- using analogies, visuals, and humor instead of math. Physics 12 will be offered on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 6 to 8:30 pm, April 8 to June 24, 2014. Pre-registration is advised, but, if there is room, you can come hear the first lecture (room 5015) and then register if you like the approach. The class is held on the main campus of Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, just off Freeway 280. (For adults who don't need a grade, arrangements can be made, after you register, to take the course without the exams.)

For registration information for the Spring Quarter see:
http://www.foothill.edu/admissions.php

Physics 12 emphasizes key ideas that form the basis of our modern concepts of space, time, matter, and energy:
* The theory of how atoms work
* Energy, heat, and the arrow of time
* The special theory of relativity: what happens when you travel close to the speed of light
* The general theory of relativity: gravity, space-time warps, and black holes
* Quantum mechanics: the bizarre rules that govern the world inside the atom

In addition to examining the physics and physicists involved with these areas, the course also takes a brief look at the effects that such physics ideas have had on the humanities -- including poetry, fiction, music, and the public view of scientists. The quarter concludes the course with a non-technical introduction to the work of Stephen Hawking, whose innovative ideas combine these areas and take some of Einstein's ideas to the outermost limits of cosmic possibility.

For a course syllabus in pdf format, see:www.foothill.edu/physics/Physics.12.Web.pdf

The Old Blogger Gets an Award

I'm humbled to tell you that the nation's science teachers have given me an award -- the 2013 Faraday Award for Science Communication. Given each year by the National Science Teachers' Association, this award recognizes "an individual who has inspired and elevated the public’s interest in science."

Among previous winners are Ira Flatow, the host of NPR's Science Friday show, and astronomy educator Dennis Schatz, my good friend and the Vice President of the Pacific Science Center in Seattle.

What's especially wonderful is that the award is named for Michael Faraday, the 19th-century British physicist who discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism, and was one of the greatest communicators of science in history. That's his picture on a British bank-note. Faraday is someone I have admired for a long time (and I am not alone -- Einstein had a picture of him on the wall of his study!) Among other things, Faraday spoke out forcefully for the importance of science education in our lives and for skeptical thinking about paranormal and psychic claims. What an honor to be associated with his name.

I'm accepting the award Friday night at the annual conference of the National Science Teachers Association in Texas.

You can read the full story of the award here:http://www.foothill.edu/news/newsfmt.php?sr=2&rec_id=2999

Here is a favorite quote from Faraday: “[A] lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.”

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Searching for Intelligence Among the Stars & the Drake Equation

At the quarterly meeting of the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute (to which I have the privilege to belong), I spent some time this week with Dr. Frank Drake, the astronomer who is the father of the science of the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Now over 80, Frank is still going strong and very much involved with the ongoing quest to find evidence that there are other intelligent species among the stars.  Today, 52 years after Frank made the first search for possible intelligent radio signals from other star systems, our technology for searching has become much more sophisticated, although funding for the searches is still sporadic.

The discovery of so many planets orbiting other stars is very encouraging to those who hope to find our counterparts out there.  The Kepler mission is showing that planets the size of Earth and planets in the habitable zones of their own stars are more common than most astronomers had dared to hope.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of encouraging Frank (and his coauthor Dava Sobel) to update a historical summary of how he came up with the "Drake Equation." Not so much an equation as a way of making estimates, this formula (which you can see behind him in the photo) is now taught in many introductory astronomy classes. It helps us summarize our best knowledge of astronomy, biology and sociology to figure out how common our type of technological civilization might be in the Galaxy.

Thanks to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (which published the column,) you can read the story of how he came up with the equation by going to:
http://www.astrosociety.org/drake/index.html

"Doomsday 2012" and Cosmophobia

As students return to school this fall, the media and web hype about Doomsday 2012 (the end of the world because a planet will hit us, something will align in the sky, the Earth's rotation or axis will change, or just because the ancient Maya said so) promises to reach a final, fevered pitch. Those of us in science and science education are preparing to respond to concerns from people (especially young people) who are genuinely worried or confused.

Two new resources are now available for educators, parents, youth group leaders, to address fears that world-wide disaster is coming on Dec. 21, 2012. Perhaps you can let your favorite teacher, school counselor, scout leader and other adult working with kids know about these.

I have put together (with lots of help) a guide to accessible written and audio-visual materials on this topic (most of them freely available on the Web). You can find it in the on-line publication "Astronomy Education Review" at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/AER2012021
(click on the "Download PDF" link under the author's name for the easiest way to see the entire article).

And a video recording of a panel I had the privilege of leading on "Doomsday 2012 and Cosmophobia" at this summer's meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific has now been posted by NASA's Lunar Science Institute at:
http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/articles/cosmophobia/

"Cosmophobia" is NASA astronomer David Morrison's name for the unnecessary fear of celestial events and phenomena. When David and I were young, new discoveries in the sky were a source of awe and fascination. Now, we are observing more and more people asking, as new things are discovered, "Should I be afraid?" It's kind of sad, given that we live mostly in splendid cosmic isolation, and most things in the universe are really much too far away to hurt us.

Please help spread the word that students will still have to take exams and we all still have to pay taxes in 2013. ·  · Share