Black Holes: The End of Time or a New Beginning? Presented by the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series November 14, 20127 to 8:30 p.m.
As part of the 13th annual
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series, astrophysicist
Roger Blandford, Ph.D,, director of the
Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University, will discuss
Black Holes: The End of Time or a New Beginning?, an illustrated, non-technical lecture,
Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Smithwick Theatre at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. Admission is free and the public is invited. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Arrive early to locate parking.
While black holes are popularly associated with death and doom, astrophysicists increasingly see them as creators not destroyers. New research suggests that black holes play a major role in the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets. Dr. Blandford will summarize why scientists now think that black holes (of various sizes) actually do exist, describe some of their strange properties, and explain their environmental impact on the universe at large. The talk will conclude with a preview of some new approaches to learning about the weird and wonderful behavior of black holes.
A native of England, Dr. Blandford earned bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees at Cambridge University where he was supervised by Martin Rees (now the Astronomer Royal). Following postdoctoral research at Cambridge, Princeton and U.C. Berkeley, he took a faculty position at Caltech in 1976, and was appointed the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1989. In 2003, he moved to Stanford University to become the first director of the Kavli Institute and the Luke Blossom Chair in the School of Humanities and Science. At Stanford, he divides his time between the physics department and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. His research interests include black holes, cosmology, gravitational lensing, cosmic ray physics, and compact stars.
The free lecture series is sponsored by the
Foothill College Astronomy Program,
NASA Ames Research Center,
SETI Institute and
Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Past lectures from the series are available online at
www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html.
Visitors must purchase a parking permit for $3 from dispensers in student parking lots.
Parking lots 1, 7 and 8 provide stair and no-stair access to the theatre. Dispensers accept one-dollar bills and quarters. Foothill College is located off I-280 on El Monte Road in Los Altos Hills. For more information, access
www.foothill.edu or call
(650) 949-7888.
Phone us at: (650) 949-7888Click here for more information.Check this link for additional information:
http://kipac.stanford.edu/kipac/Special Notice: Admission is free; parking is $3. Purchase required parking permit for $3 from dispensers in any student lot.
