Physics Colloquia Fall 2012

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

Details: Created: Monday, December 03 2012 00:00; Last Updated: Monday, December 03 2012 13:17; Written by Carole Kiger; Hits: 3988

Steven M. Kahn, Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
December 11, 2012

LSST is a large-aperture, wide-field, ground-based telescope designed to provide an imaging survey of half the sky in six optical colors every few nights. As such, it will enable a diverse array of distinct scientific investigations, ranging from compiling a census of moving objects in the solar system to charting the formation and structure of the Milky Way galaxy. Of particular interest for cosmology and fundamental physics, LSST will provide tight constraints on the expansion history of the universe via statistical measurements of the shapes and distributions of billions of galaxies out to moderate-to-high redshifts. In view of these capabilities, LSST was ranked as the highest priority major new ground-based facility by the 2010 decadal survey in astronomy and astrophysics commissioned by the National Research Council. I will review the key aspects of the design of this facility and highlight some of its scientific potential, with particular emphasis on the power of LSST to constrain the properties of dark energy.

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Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.

Astronomy

Details: Created: Friday, October 26 2012 12:11; Last Updated: Friday, October 26 2012 12:11; Written by Carole Kiger; Hits: 2569

Steve Kahn, Stanford University
December 11, 2012

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Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.

The Matter of our Matter: Tales From Nuclear Science

Details: Created: Friday, October 26 2012 12:07; Last Updated: Wednesday, November 07 2012 16:14; Written by Carole Kiger; Hits: 3879

Betsy Beise, University of Maryland
November 13, 2012

Astrophysical observations seem to tell us that only a small fraction of the matter of the universe is visible, the rest identified as either “dark matter” or “dark energy.” Yet that small sliver that we can see, estimated to be about 4%, is responsible for all of the stars, planets, and the atoms that make up us. This “matter of our matter” is the primary focus of nuclear science, spanning the creation of chemical elements in stars to the first emergence of their basic building blocks, the protons and neutrons inside atomic nuclei. Even these basic building blocks have a complex structure, composed of point-like quarks popping in and out of existence and bound together by force-carrying particles called gluons. How they assemble themselves to produce the characteristics that we can measure very precisely, such as charge and magnetism, is still a mystery. This talk will be a broad overview of some of the major open questions of nuclear science and the tools used to address them. Some examples of the benefits of nuclear science to society will also be given. Dr. Beise will draw heavily from the most recent National Academies decadal survey of nuclear science, “Exploring the Heart of Matter”, published in 2012.

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Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.

Astrophysics

Details: Created: Friday, October 26 2012 12:10; Last Updated: Friday, October 26 2012 12:10; Written by Carole Kiger; Hits: 6442

Adam Riess, Johns Hopkins University
November 27, 2012

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Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.

Physical Nature of Bacterial Decision Making

Details: Created: Friday, October 26 2012 12:06; Last Updated: Friday, November 02 2012 14:39; Written by Carole Kiger; Hits: 2936

Janè Kondev, Brandeis University
November 6, 2012

Cells make decisions all the time about what to eat, where to go, and what to become. At the heart of cellular decision making is gene regulation, the process by which cells turn their genes on and off in response to environmental ques. Experiments have recently begun to probe gene regulation inside cells at the single molecule level, revealing the physical nature of this key biological process in quantitative detail. In this talk Janè Kondev, Brandeis University, will review these experimental advances in single-cell gene expression measurements and the theoretical models that are being put forth to greet them. He will emphasize the interplay of theory and experiments and how it has revealed interesting surprises about some of the best studied models of gene regulation in bacteria such as the lac operon.

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Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.