Sonoma State University's popular "What Physicists Do" public lecture series features a schedule of prominent scientists discussing the latest adventures in astronomy and physics.
Lectures have moved to Tuesdays at 4 p.m., Feb. 8 through May 10, in room 2006 of Stevenson Hall on the SSU campus.
The first two speakers are prominent astrophysicists. UCLA professor Eric Becklin will describe SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, on Feb. 8. SOFIA includes a 100-inch telescope that will soon be flying in a modified Boeing 747 to get above most of the infrared-absorbing water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere.
On Feb. 15, Roger Blandford, the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University, speaks about cosmic ray particles, probably protons, which occasionally strike Earth with as much energy as a tennis ball.
IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin discusses novel sensor, memory, and logic devices based on manipulating the flow of spin-polarized electrons on March 1.
SSU observes the International Year of Physics, the centennial of Einstein's "miracle year" of 1905, with a talk by Tilman Sauer on "Einstein and the Riddle of his Creativity" March 22. Sauer is one of the editors working on Einstein's papers at Caltech.
"Deep Down Beauty: Particle Physics, Mathematics, and the World Around Us" is the title of the April 5 talk by UC Santa Cruz physicist Bruce Schumm, author of a recent book on the beauty of particle physics.
Tom Ramos of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discusses some research on physics for the national defense, including "Star Wars" and nuclear proliferation April 12.
Other talks focus on quasicrystals, nanolithography, the expanding universe, and scanning tunneling microscopy of surfaces.
SSU professor Joe Tenn, who is directing the series, expresses his gratitude to the donors who have made it possible to bring such distinguished speakers to SSU for the privately-funded lectures. He also encourages visitors to arrive early, as the new room is smaller than the lecture room used for many years but now under reconstruction.
For a free poster describing all thirteen lectures, see http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/wpd/ send e-mail to gayle.walker@sonoma.edu, or call (707) 664-2119.
