2010
Our 22nd Season on the Mountain
Apr 17: Emmy Noether and the Fabric of Reality
Noether’s Theorem ties the laws of nature – from Newton’s laws to thermodynamics to charge conservation – directly to the geometry of space and time, the very fabric of reality.
Ransom W. Stephens, Ph.D, author of The God Patent. As a physics professor, he discovered a new type of matter and was on the team that discovered the top quark.
Ransom W. Stephens
May 22: Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe
Observations of very distant exploding stars (supernovae) show that the expansion of the Universe is now speeding up, rather than slowing down due to gravity as expected.
Dr. Alex Filippenko, is one of the world's most highly cited astronomers. He was the only person to serve on both teams that simultaneously discovered the Nobel-worthy accelerating expansion of the universe. Alex has been voted UC Berkeley's "Best Professor" a record nine times.
Alex Filippenko
Jun 19: Why We Need to Colonize Space
Everyone talks about colonizing space, but is it just a pipe dream? If at least some of us aren't off this planet within a half-century or so, our lifestyles are going to be less than commodious!
Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute. He’s co-authored a college textbook on astrobiology, and has written three trade books on SETI. In addition, he’s published more than 400 popular articles on science including regular contributions to NBC News MACH, gives many dozens of talks annually, and is the host of the SETI Institute’s weekly science radio show, “Big Picture Science.”
Seth Shostak
Jul 17: Galileo, Telescopes and the Beginning of Modern Science
Review of the history of science and an exploration of the subtle, complex relationship between Galileo, telescopes, Science and the Church.
John Dillon is Curator of Natural Science at the Randall Museum and President of the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers. He is also a Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of California Extension and the California Academy of Sciences.
John Dillon
Aug 14: The Many Mysteries of Antimatter
How and when the imbalance of matter over antimatter developed is one of the great mysteries to unravel to understand the underlying properties of the universe.
Dr. Helen Quinn, SLAC, Stanford University
Helen Quinn
Sep 11: The Globe at Night: How And Why to Preserve the Night Sky
Saving our Dark Skies is a Global Problem. Find out how light pollution is measured and what you can do to understand and help preserve this natural resource locally.
Kenneth Frank, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Dark Sky Network
Kenneth Frank
Oct 9: Terraforming the Second Home for Humanity
The ultimate development of a planet as a second home for Earth life is terraforming. Why is Mars the most productive next place to settle and how can it be terraformed.
Jim Brown, The Mars Society
Jim Brown