The Kepler spacecraft, to be launched in March, is the topic of the first lecture in Sonoma State University's "What Physicists Do" series this spring. Natalie Batalha of NASA Ames Research Center will explain how the mission will search for habitable planets around other stars.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is at 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, in Darwin 103. Coffee, cookies, and conversation will be served in the Darwin lobby from 3:30 p.m.
Astronomer Batalha, who is on leave from her job as a professor at San José State University, will also highlight some of the job opportunities that exist for physics majors in the space sciences.
SSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy presents a lecture every Monday that classes are in session until May 4. The Department is grateful to the private donors who make the series possible.
Since 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, commemorating Galileo's historic use of the telescope 400 years ago, there will be several lectures on astronomical topics.
These will include "The Convergence of Particle Physics and Astrophysics: The LHC/FERMI Era" by UCSC physicist Michael Dine Feb. 9, "The Light, the Dark, and the Hot Gas: Dissecting Galaxy Clusters" by Stanford astronomer Anja von der Linden Feb. 23, and "Exploring the Extreme Universe with Fermi" by SSU's own Lynn Cominsky March 23. Cominsky heads Education and Public Outreach for NASA's newest orbiting observatory, formerly called the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope.
Physics will not be neglected. There will be talks on ultrashort pulse lasers made by Raydiance, Inc. in Petaluma, imaging with X-ray lasers, nanomechanics, the search for dark matter, and the acoustics of 250-year-old bassoons.
SSU graduate Jeremy Hieb will speak on energy research in Denmark, and astrophysicist Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz will describe collisions between such objects as black holes and neutron stars.
The spring series ends May 4, when its founder and long-time director, Joseph Tenn, concludes his career with "Thirty-nine Years of Physics and Astronomy at Sonoma State University."
For a free poster describing all twelve lectures, visit http://phys-astro.sonoma.edu/wpd/, send e-mail to phys.astro@sonoma.edu, or call (707) 664-2119.
