Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures
Listen to exciting, non-technical talks on some of the most interesting developments in astronomy and space science. Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. Speakers include a wide range of noted scientists, explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The series is organized and moderated by Foothill's astronomy instructor emeritus Andrew Fraknoi and jointly sponsored by the Foothill College Physical Science, Math, and Engineering Division, the SETI Institute, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the University of California Observatories (including the Lick Observatory.)
- Update frequency
- every 23 days
- Average duration
- 77 minutes
- Episodes
- 54
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2025
Science at the Edge of the Solar System
A Talk by Dr. Oliver White (SETI Institute)
May 28, 2025
Ten years ago, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by the Pluto system and revealed an unexpectedly diverse range of landscapes on that dwarf plane…
New Worlds: Analyzing the Atmospheres of Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope
Non-technical Talk by Prof. Jonathan Fortney (U. of California, Santa Cruz)
Apr. 9, 2025
Over 6000 planets have now been found around other stars, but we only have information about what their atmosph…
Copernicus 4.0: How the Views of Earth's Importance and the Search for Life are Changing
Mar. 5, 2025
Dr. Simon Steel (SETI Institute)
Dr. Steel discusses the Copernican revolution and how it changed humanity's view of its place in the universe. He then talked about other "Copernican" di…
Human-Robotic Exploration from the Moon to Mars
Jan. 29, 2025
Dr. Darlene Lim (NASA Ames Research Center)
NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) is a planned mission to go to the South Pole of the Moon and get a close-up view…
Observing with the James Webb Space Telescope: Glimpsing the First Stars
Nov. 13, 2024
Dr. Dan Coe (Space Telescope Science Institute)
The Webb Telescope was designed to look back in time, to study the first generation of stars, and reveal our cosmic origins. Now in its sec…
Profound and Staggering: The Impact on Religion of the Discovery of Life around Other Stars
Recorded Oct. 9, 2024
Astronomers have now discovered thousands of planets in orbit around other stars. Dr. Weintraub discusses those discoveries, and predicts the progress astronomers are likely to m…
The Copernicus Complex: Are We Special in the Cosmos
With Prof. Caleb Scharf (Columbia University)
Is humanity on Earth special or unexceptional? Extraordinary discoveries in astronomy and biology have revealed a universe filled with endlessly diverse …
Black Widow Pulsars: The Vengeful Corpses of Stars
With Dr. Roger Romani (Stanford University):
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed a violent high-energy universe full of stellar explosions, black hole jets, and pulsing stars. These c…
Europa Clipper: Exploring Jupiter's Ocean World
Presenter is the Project Scientist, Dr. Robert Pappalardo (JPL)
May 22, 2024
Jupiter's moon Europa may be a habitable world, containing the “ingredients” necessary for life within its ocean. Data from …
The Allure of the Multiverse (with Dr. Paul Halpern)
Apr. 17, 2024
In this talk, physicist and popular author Paul Halpern (St. Joseph's College) examines the history of the concept of a multiverse in science, and discusses the ideas by Einstein and oth…
The Black Hole Wars: My Battle with Stephen Hawking
With Dr. Leonard Susskind (Stanford University)
Black holes, the collapsed remnants of the largest stars, provide a remarkable laboratory where the frontier concepts of our understanding of nature are…
Black Holes and the Technology to Find Them
A Non-technical Talk by Dr. Jessica Lu (University of California, Berkeley) on March 13, 2024
The population of black holes, objects left over from dead stars, is almost entirely unexplored. Only abo…
Exploring the Gravitational Wave Universe
Speaker: Dr. Brian Lantz (Stanford University)
Feb. 7, 2024
Measuring gravitational waves is a revolutionary new way to do astronomy. They were predicted by Einstein, but it was not until 2015, that L…
Water Above, Water Below: The Many Roles of Water in Making Planets Habitable
Dr. Laura Schaefer (Stanford University):
Water is everywhere. Its atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, are the first and fifth most abundant elements in the universe. Water is found in abundance in many envir…
The Peril and Profit of Near-Earth Objects
A Talk by Dr. Robert Jedicke (U of Hawaii)
Oct. 11, 2023
Near-Earth objects present both an existential threat to human civilization and an extraordinary opportunity to help our exploration and expansi…
SPECIAL: An Interview with Frank Drake: The Founder of SETI Science (conducted by Andrew Fraknoi)
June 2012
Frank Drake (1930-2022) was known as the "father of SETI science" -- he was the scientist who conducted the first radio survey for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, and came up wi…
Ashes to Ashes, Earth to Earth, Dust to Dust: The Birth and Death of Worlds
with Dr. Eugene Chiang (University of California, Berkeley)
June 21, 2023
We now know that our solar system is but one of countless others. Where did all these planets come from? What are their fates, …
An Eclipse Double-Header: Two North American Eclipses of the Sun in 2023 & 2024 (with Andrew Fraknoi)
North America will be treated to two eclipses of the Sun in the 2023-24 school year: an annular eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023 and a total eclipse on Apr. 8, 2024. Some 500 million people will be in a pos…
The First Results from the James Webb Space Telescope (with Dr. Alex Filippenko)
Dr. Alex Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley)
Mar. 8, 2023
We have a new supersensitive eye in the cosmic sky. Parked nearly one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWS…
Our Boldest Effort to Answer our Oldest Question: Breakthrough-Listen Search for Intelligent Life
For centuries, humans have gazed at the night sky and wondered if any intelligent life forms like us might be out there. In 2015, the Breakthrough Foundation gave a $100 million grant to the Univers…