The Physical Science (PS) Series offers events that showcase the current understanding of the origin of the Universe, properties of matter and energy and the relationships between them, and space exploration.
Previous PS events have covered dark matter, Switzerland’s CERN Laboratory, the Hubble Telescope, quarks and the cosmos, navigating earth and space, and the physics of baseball.
Distinguished speakers have included Astronaut John Grunsfeld; Nobel Laureate John C. Mather; and Laura Trouille, Astronomer, Northwestern University & Adler Planetarium.
Chicago Council on Science and Technology and the Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Center present
Just in time for opening day!
Dr Alan Nathan spent a career doing experimental nuclear physics, where he studied the high-speed collisions of subatomic particles. Continue reading “The Physics of Baseball”
QM2017 Public Lecture in collaboration with C2ST
For the first second of time, long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, our universe was a hot primordial soup of “elementary” particles like quarks. Encoded in this formless, shapeless quark soup were the imprints of events from an even earlier epoch—the very beginning of the universe. Continue reading “From Quarks to the Cosmos”
Opening Day may seem far in the distant future, but that doesn’t stop us from counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report for the spring season, and for the official start of spring training.
But there is no better way to celebrate the Cubs’ World Series than taking a closer look at what happens on the ballfield: Why does Jon Lester’s curveball curve? How did David Ross handle all those fastballs? And what’s the quickest way for Dexter Fowler to run around the bases? Continue reading “The Physics of Baseball: What Newton said to the Billygoat”
“He pointed out to him the bearings of the coast, explained to him the variations of the compass, and taught him to read in that vast book opened over our heads which they call heaven, and where God writes in azure with letters of diamonds.” — Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Continue reading “Navigation Across the Oceans, Earth, and Space”
Everything we see today, our precious atoms and molecules, got here by traveling on swaths of dark matter. From the oscillations of the hot plasma of the primordial universe, to the formation and dynamics of modern galaxies, dark matter plays a necessary role. The very construct in which we sit is defined by its abundance. Our universe’s evolution is controlled tightly by a cosmic tug-of-war between dark matter and dark energy. Continue reading “C2ST Speakeasy: “Dark Matter — The Dark Path to our Being” with Dr. Ritoban Basu Thakur”
There’s a treasure at the edge of the Solar System. It’s a data recorder, aboard the New Horizons spacecraft, slowly sending to Earth several gigabytes acquired during last summer’s flyby of Pluto. That information is still coming down. At the mission’s home base in Maryland, William S. Higgins witnessed the excitement during the encounter. Now he reviews results, downlinked in recent months, that are illuminating the mysteries of Pluto, its five moons, and its neighborhood. Continue reading “C2ST Speakeasy: “Playback from Pluto: Recent News from NASA’s New Horizon Spacecraft” with William S. Higgins”