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
Spacetime Symphony: Gravitational Waves from Merging Black Holes
Talk by Dr. Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University)
Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. They travel at the speed of light, but are much harder to detect than…
100 Years of Einstein's Relativity (And How it Underlies Our Modern Understanding of the Universe)
With Dr. Jeffrey Bennett (University of Colorado)
2015 marked the 100th anniversary of Einstein's completion of his General Theory of Relativity, the comprehensive theory of space, time, and gravity. …
Space Weather and the Question of Human Survivability (with Dr. Tom Berger)
The Sun can unleash violent “space weather” -- storms that can radiate X-rays and even gamma rays into space, send giant clouds of magnetic plasma slamming into the Earth and other planets, and spray…
Is Anyone out There: The Hundred-Million Dollar "Breakthrough: Listen" Project
with Dr. Dan Werthimer of the University of California, Berkeley
What is the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe and how might we detect signals from alien civilizations? Dr. Werthi…
A Planet for Goldilocks: Kepler and the Search for Living Worlds
With Dr. Natalie Batalha (NASA, Kepler Mission Project Scientist)
NASA's Kepler Mission launched in 2009 with the objective of finding "Goldilocks planets" orbiting other stars like our Sun -- those t…
The Fast Radio Sky: A New Window on the Violent Universe
In this episode, Dr. Victoria Kaspi (McGill University) introduces us to a brand-new mystery in the skies -- superfast bursts of radio waves whose source is still unknown. These energetic bursts com…
Colliding Neutron Stars, Gravity Waves, and the Origin of the Heavy Elements
with Prof. Eliot Quataert (University of California, Berkeley)
In the previous decade, one third of the world's astronomers became involved in a single project -- observing a distant and violent even…
When Mars Was Like Earth: Five Years of Exploration with the Curiosity Rover
Speaker: Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
For five years, Curiosity explored Gale Crater, one of the most intriguing locations on Mars -- once the site of an ancient lake. In…
Rubble Piles in the Sky: The Science, Exploration, and Danger of Near-Earth Asteroids
with Dr, Michael Busch (SETI Institute)
Near-Earth asteroids are a population of small bodies whose orbits around the Sun cross or come near our planet’s orbit. They turn out to be unusual physical e…
Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto (with Alan Stern & David Grinspoon)
In July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto, revealing its surface to our view for the first time. In this program, Drs. Alan Stern and David Grinspoon give us an insider's view of how th…
Do Humans Have What it Takes to Thrive in this Universe?
Dr. Sandra Faber (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Do Humans Have What it Takes to Thrive in this Universe?
In this thought-provoking talk, cosmologist (and National Medal of Science winner) Dr. S…
A Sharper Image: Seeing Colliding Galaxies with Adaptive Optics (with Dr. Claire Max)
When light from space enters Earth’s atmosphere, it is distorted and displaced, something our eyes perceive as “twinkling.” Adaptive optics can remove a great deal of this distortion, essentially re…
Cosmobiology: Recent Progress in Cosmology, Exoplanets, and the Prerequisites for Life in the Universe
In this talk, astrobiologist Charles Lineweaver discusses the history of life on Earth and what we can deduce from our understanding of the universe about the existence and history of life elsewhere.…
Cosmology and Ambition: Losing the Nobel Prize (with Dr. Brian Keating)
What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers using the powerful BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole thought they’d glimpsed evidence of the period of cosmic i…
Planets Under Our Feet: The Caves on Earth, Mars, and Beyond (with Dr. Penelope Boston)
New exploration indicates that caves may be more common on rocky and icy worlds in our Solar System than we have thought in the past. Caves below the Earth show us a very different planet than the fa…
Dark Star: The Invisible Universe of Brown Dwarfs (with Dr. Adam Burgasser)
In this illustrated talk, Dr. Burgasser explains what happens when a newly forming star doesn't have "what it takes" to produce energy in its core in an ongoing way. This results in "failed stars" o…
Charon, Pluto’s Companion: What We’re Learning from New Horizons (with Dr. Ross Beyer)
Pluto’s large moon Charon turned out to be far more interesting than astronomers expected. Pluto was the star when the New Horizons probe flew by, but the features on Charon’s surface tell a fascina…
Living with a Star: A Life-friendly Planetary Environment (with Dr. Michelle Thaller)
In this nontechnical talk, illustrated with the latest images and video, Dr. Thaller asks what makes a world habitable? What creates and sustains an environment friendly to life? She then discusses…
Beyond: Our Future in Space (with Dr. Chris Impey)
Decades after we last set foot on the Moon, and several years after the Space Shuttle was retired, space activity is finally leaving the doldrums. Permanent bases on the Moon and Mars are now within…
Ocean Worlds in Our Solar System (with Dr. Kevin Hand)
Where is the best place to find living life beyond Earth? It may be that the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn harbor some of the most habitable real estate in our Solar System. Life lo…