February 15: My Life as a Higgs Boson

Friday, February 15th, Gladys Velez Caicedo had the very difficult task of explaining what exactly the Higgs Boson is and how its existence is necessitated by the Standard Model of Physics. The Standard Model explains all the particles we know, such as protons, neutrons, and electrons, along with their interactions. Gladys is a second year undergraduate at Barnard College studying Astrophysics and Literature and is a researcher at Nevis Laboratories working with the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) and the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. If you missed the talk or if you just want to immerse yourself in some hard-core physics, you can view the slides from Gladys's talk here.

Over 175 people came out for the event, and we were lucky to have the roof available for star-gazing for an hour after the lecture despite the encroaching cloud cover. The 3D wall was manned by Bryan Terrazas.

After the lecture, I led a small discussion in which we talked about the recent meteorite impact in Russia, along with the near-Earth asteroid that came within 17,200 miles of us, closer than orbiting equatorial geosynchronous satellites! In comparison, the moon is between 220,000 to 250,000 miles away. The discussion was slightly free-form due to the recent nature of the event, and it included us watching some internet videos from Russia. The discussion also focused on efforts humans are undertaking to detect future near-Earth asteroids and possible collisions. Thanks to all who came and participated in this Friday’s outreach program!

Meteor and asteroid videos:
Russia Meteorite Compilation
Another Meteorite Video
Asteroid 2012 DA14 Close Approach
Asteroid Discoveries

--Emir Karamehmetoglu (undergraduate student)

February 3: Top 11 Astronomy Stories of 2011

Last night, graduating grad student, Jana Grcevich, kicked off our Spring lecture series by recapping the "Top 11 Astronomy Stories of 2011." Some of the highlights included: the most massive galaxy cluster found, a possible detection of the Higgs boson, a possible detection of a supermassive black hole devouring a star, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics going to three astronomers, and the discovery of over 3000 new exoplanets.

Jana ranked the new planet discoveries as number one on her list and many people would agree. Understanding and determining the available real estate for life to grab a foothold in our galaxy, let alone the rest of the Universe, ranks as one of the top 3 questions asked by humanity since humanity could ponder its own existence. Jana explained how the discoveries were made, by the Kepler space telescope, by stating that it measures the dimming of light from a star to determine the nature of the object causing the dimming due to occultation (the object passing in front of the star). She then focused on some of the gems from this exciting database of planets which included the discovery of a super earth-massed planet (roughly 2.5x) orbiting around its star in the habitable zone - an object known as Kepler 22b. Afterwards, she pointed out some planets orbit around binary stars, giving a shout out to the fans of Star Wars who recall Tatooine’s planetary system. Last, but not least, she displayed the best determination for many planetary systems’ orbits and configurations which showed us that planetary systems similar to our own are actually common place and not rare as previous thought based on the planetary systems discovered before the Kepler mission.

Many good questions were asked from the 140+ attendees last night, proving that a recap of the LAST year’s exciting discoveries was a great way to start off THIS year’s lecture series.

--Duane