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 South Pole Telescope Exploratorium Web cast
18 January 2008
10:00 am
Dec 7, 2007 10:00 CST
Dec 21, 2007 10:00 CST
Jan 18, 2008 10:00 CST
South Pole Telescope project collaborates with the Exploratorium to bring Live Web-Casts from the South Pole.
Dec 21, 2007: Join us as we talk with scientists working on the South Pole Telescope. In today's program, we'll learn about the various projects and teams of people on the project, how they work together, and how they analyze the data they receive.
Jan 18, 2008: In our final talk with the South Pole Telescope staff, we'll learn about data collection. We'll focus on the receiver, a very precise instrument that is a sensitive, state-of-the-art data collector with a thousand "eyes" pointed to the distant universe. We'll also meet the scientists who will be wintering over at the South Pole for eight cold, dark months.
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 The International Astroparticle Physics Symposium: The High Energy Frontier
6-8 May 2008
Colorado School of Mines (CSM), Golden, Colorado
Recent developments in Astroparticle Physics have begun to revolutionize our view of the most energetic processes in the present Universe. From TeV gamma-rays, to ZeV cosmic rays, the high energy frontier is beginning to probe particle interactions at the highest energies while the most energetic cosmic accelerators become directly observable. The implications of these new findings for particle physics and astrophysics are only starting to become clear. A new era of multi-messenger particle astronomy is dawning, opening a new window to the Universe. The time is right for experimenters and theorists to examine the state of the field.
The program includes plenary sessions by invited speakers summarizing the state of the art in high-energy astroparticle physics. Afternoon workshops offer the opportunity to contribute your own views and results in an open and inspiring atmosphere. A panel discussion on future physics goals and next-generation instruments will be the highlight of the symposium.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) that sponsor the panel discussion.
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 International Symposium: "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: From Asteroids to Cosmology"
15-18 August 2008
Merchandise Mart Conference Center (2nd Floor), 350 West Mart Center Drive, Chicago IL 60654
Over eight years of observations, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I, 2000 - 2005; SDSS-II, 2005 - 2008) has transformed many fields of astronomy, from the identification of asteroid families to the discovery of the most distant quasars, from substructure in the outer Galaxy to the large-scale structure of the Universe.
This broad-ranging symposium will review progress and prospects in these fields, including observational contributions from the SDSS and from other major surveys, theoretical interpretation of the results, and plans for the next generation of large astronomical survey projects. The program will include invited reviews, contributed talks, posters, and a symposium banquet on a cruise boat on Lake Michigan.
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 Workshop: Viewing the Universe via the World Wide Web
3-5 September 2008
Kersten Physics Teaching Center (KPTC) at The University of Chicago
New, visually rich, astronomical software environments coupled with large web-accessible data sets hold the promise of new and exciting ways to teach, collaborate, and explore the universe. This workshop will examine the host of emerging, holistic, visual, astronomy software products; in particular Google Sky and World Wide Telescope. With the help of developers of these applications, we will investigate their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. A primary focus of the workshop will be utilizing these tools to create tours, classroom applications, collaborative research environments, and laboratory exercises. These development efforts will be supported by mini-tutorials and one-on-one instruction by the creators of these products; and shared with fellow participants.
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Josh Frieman, Mapping the Heavens: The Universe Revealed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
12 January 2008
4:30 pm
Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
In this full-dome multimedia presentation, Dr. Frieman will describe and fly us through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the most ambitious 3D map of the Universe ever constructed. This flight will let us explore this vast survey that is shaping our understanding of how the Universe has evolved from its earliest moments.
Part of Festival of Maps: Chicago
Free with museum admission (Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum).
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Cafe Scientifique: Melina Hale, "Bombs and Brains: Examining Traumatic Brain Injury from the War in Iraq"
10 March 2008
7:00 pm
The Map Room - 1949 North Hoyne Ave Chicago, IL
Closed brain injury -- damage to the brain without skull penetration -- is a characteristic injury of the war in Iraq. It is much more prevalent then in previous wars due in part to increased survivability of major injuries to the body and to increased exposure to blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Providing care and treatment for returning service men and women who have sustained such injuries is a major ongoing concern facing the United States.
Come for a discussion of issues surrounding traumatic brain injuries such as those sustained in the Iraq war, research examining the diverse effects of blasts on the brain, and current and potential future directions for prevention and treatment of head injury.
For more info see:
Research at Chicago video on Dr. Hale "Circuit-Breaking: The Startle Response and Neuromotor Function"
March 10-16 is Brain awareness week!
Contact E-mail: randy kicp.uchicago.edu
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Randall Landsberg, Catching Cosmic Monsters: Powerful & Rare
27 March 2008
2:00 pm
Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Room 259B
From brains to the Big Bang, take a crash course in forefront science with the NSF Physics Frontier Centers, including hands-on activities and summer opportunities.
Contact E-mail: randykicp.uchicago.edu
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KICP open house for prospective graduate students
4 April 2008
1:00 pm
LASR Conference Room 152
1:00 - 1:30 PM Reception for Astronomy & Physics students with KICP faculty, fellows and students
1:30 - 2:00 PM Presentations by Stephan Meyer and Andrey Kravtsov
2:00 - 3:00 PM Lab Tours or Theory Group:
* Collar lab tour (Juan Collar)
* CMB lab tour (Clarence Chang, Tom Crawford, Jeff McMahon)
* meet with individual members of theory group
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67th Compton Lectures: Kathryn Schaffer, "Seeing and Believing: Detection, Measurement, and Inference in Experimental Physics"
5 April-14 June 2008
11:00 am
Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 S. Ellis Avenue, Room 106, Chicago, IL 60637
Physics today pushes ahead with new results and ideas that can sound fantastical and bizarre. How can we possibly stand in a lecture hall in Chicago and talk sensibly about the beginning of the universe, or phenomena at impossibly small scales? Anyone, faced with the notions that arise at the frontiers of physics, has the right to ask: "How can you know that?", and "Why should I believe it"? While physics involves some speculation, the major results in the field are always based on concrete observations and down-to-earth reasoning. Most experimental results in physics can be boiled down to detection of a radiation signal, measurement of properties of that signal, and inference using statistics and cross-checks. Therefore, an understanding of the physics of detection and simple statistics can go a long way towards demystifying even the strangest claims in the field. The 67th Compton Lecture Series will tackle the buzzing subatomic world and the physics of radiation detection, using case studies from neutrino physics and cosmology to explore measurement and uncertainty on some of the frontiers of the field.
April 5, 2008 11:00 am
April 12, 2008 11:00 am
April 19, 2008 11:00 am
April 26, 2008 11:00 am
May 3, 2008 11:00 am
May 10, 2008 11:00 am
May 17, 2008 11:00 am
May 31, 2008 11:00 am
June 7, 2008 11:00 am
June 14, 2008 11:00 am
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Postal Service pays tribute to astronomer Edwin Hubble
30 April 2008
3:00 pm
Research Institutes building, 5640 S. Ellis Ave., Room 480
Chicago unveiling of commemorative stamp honoring University of Chicago alumnus Edwin Hubble. The event is open to the public.
Edward "Rocky" Kolb, Professor and Chairman, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago
James Mruk, Manager, Public Affairs & Communications, Great Lakes Area of the United States Postal Service
In March, the U.S. Postal Service acknowledged some of the most impressive scientific achievements of the 20th century with the issue of its second series of American Scientists stamps. Astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), alumnus of the University of Chicago (S.B., 1910, Ph.D., 1917), played a pivotal role in deciphering the vast and complex nature of the universe. His meticulous studies of spiral nebulae proved the existence of galaxies other than our own Milky Way, paving the way for a revolutionary new understanding that the cosmos contains myriad separate galaxies or "island universes."
The local unveiling of the Edwin Hubble stamp will take place before the weekly colloquium of the University's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
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Defense of Ph.D Thesis: Jennifer Siegal-Gaskins, Revealing dark matter substructure with anisotropies in the diffuse gamma-ray background
13 June 2008
10:00 am
LASR conference room
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 Workshop: "Science with Giant Telescopes: Public Participation in TMT and GMT"
15-18 June 2008
Chicago IL
The GSMT Science Working Group (SWG) is promoting the public-private partnership in a next generation Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) that received the highest ranking of all ground-based programs in the 2000 Decadal Survey of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The Thirty-Meter-Telescope (TMT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) are two ambitious but viable projects that have responded to the Decadal Survey's challenge. The Science Working Group believes that, over the decade, the case for facilities such as GMT and TMT is even more compelling: these are essential tools to continued progress in high-priority science goals in our field.
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 Cafe Scientifique: Michael S. Turner, "The Dark Side: from Dark Energy and Dark Matter to Washington and Science Policy"
16 June 2008
7:00 pm
Map Room - 1949 North Hoyne Ave Chicago, IL
(Limited to first 50 Attendees)
Cosmology is in a golden age of discovery and understanding. Using telescopes, underground detectors and accelerators, cosmologists are poised to answer big questions --- what is the dark matter that holds our galaxy and every structure in the Universe together? What is the nature of the dark energy that is causing the expansion of the Universe to speed up? And What happened before the big bang? This exciting research is largely funded by the federal government in a way that is more complicated than rocket science, but which has broad support from the public.
Image Credit: Michael S. Turner
Contact E-mail: randyoddjob.uchicago.edu
Online Materials
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 CMBPol Workshop: Theory and Foreground
23-26 June 2008
Fermilab
The workshop will be slightly different than other conferences/workshops in the field. There will be relatively few talks and the bulk of the time will be set aside for 5 working groups: Inflation, Lensing, Reionization, Foreground Science, and Foreground Removal. Each working group will produce a coherent paper summarizing the case for a CMB polarization satellite mission. These sections will be submitted simultaneously to the arxiv and bound together [with a unifying introduction] into a document that will be passed on to the Decadel Survey.
Contact E-mail: dodelsonfnal.gov
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Digital Sky Academy
25 June 2008
8:00 am
LASR Conference
This is an intensive technical training session for digital planetarium dome users and potential users (e.g., how to incorporate your data into dome shows). KICP research will also be presented in the context of planetarium shows. (Space Limited)
AGENDA
8:00 Continental breakfast served in KICP room
8:30 Welcome and logistics of KICP - Agenda for the day, & the DSA Forum - Martin Ratcliffe
8:45 Professor Michael Turner: Cosmology: Where we are, the challenges ahead and a changing culture.
Abstract: The state of cosmology today is easy to summarize: we know much, but understand little. We know the shape, age and contents of the Universe and have evidence that the Universe underwent a burst of very rapid expansion during its earliest moments (inflation) that resulted in quantum fluctuations being transmuted into the density perturbations that seeded all structure. However, we don't understand what the bulk of the Universe is - the 96% in dark matter and dark energy - we don't know what caused inflation and we don't know how the Universe began, to mention just a few of the big puzzles. The style of astronomy is changing, from a romantic science dominated by a few individuals who held their data close to big science and more democratic teams that produce very large datasets that are available to all, scientists and the public alike.
9:45 DSA Session 1 New Scripting Interface - Ed White
10:30 Coffee Break
11:00 DSA Session 2 - Data Handling - Mike Sperry
12:00 Informal Lunch - Cold Sandwiches - served in meeting room. (Meal $10)
13:00 DSA session 3 - DSA Medley - assorted topics including type of CG objects DS2 can handle.
14:30 Coffee Break
15:00 KICP Presentations 2 & 3 - Cosmic Rays (Vasos Pavlidou), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (M. SubbaRao), more science for the Dome (Cosmic Rays in Top Ten Science stories in Nature, and front cover of Science in November 07.
16:00 DSA Session 4 - People’s Choice - you pick a topic you would like to learn about - Ed White, Johan Gisjenbergs, Mike Sperry and Martin Ratcliffe
17:15 Wrap up/Q&A
17:30 Adjourn
18:00 Meet at restaurant for a no-host dinner (no-host = individual bills)
The Digital Sky Academy (DSA) is Sky-Skan's professional network of planetarium professionals who use the DigitalSky2/Digital Universe planetarium software in their domes. The content is as important as the programming, so we find ways to build collaborations with professional researchers, build new datasets for use in DigitalSky 2.
Sky-Skan offers DSA training sessions for individuals, and at some regional or international planetarium conference we feature a full day of advanced training and invite speakers to present modern astronomy to the planetarium staff. In this way, the planetarium staff stay up-to-date, it provides opportunity for future collaboration between the planetariums and researchers, and is a good way to leverage information out to the astronomical community, whose planetarium theaters around the world are host to large audiences.
Sky-Skan also hosts an on-line forum featuring a variety of postings by Sky-Skan staff and planetarium staff covering a wide range of topics, from updates from AAS meetings to technical and programming support for DigitalSky 2.
Contact E-mail: randyoddjob.uchicago.edu
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 CMBPol Workshop: Mitigating Systematic Errors in Space-based CMB Polarization Measurements
28-30 July 2008
Annapolis, Maryland
The workshop "Mitigating Systematic Errors in Space-based CMB Polarization Measurements" will cover systematic effects relevant to measuring primordial B-modes in the CMB and using them to constrain Inflation. We will discuss sources, simulations, instrument designs and observing strategies. A review of the current "state of the art" from suborbital and orbital platforms will feed into our discussion of issues of particular relevance for CMBPol. The output of this workshop will be a written document that will become part of the full CMBPol Mission Concept Study.
The workshop will take place at the Double Tree Hotel in Annapolis, MD. The meeting is being hosted by the Goddard Space Flight Center.
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 CMBPol Workshop: Technology Development for a CMB Probe of Inflation
25-28 August 2008
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, Colorado
We will discuss the detector, optics, and cooling technology developments that are necessary to implement a CMB polarization satellite in the next decade.
This workshop is one of three workshops that are organized as part of the CMB community's effort to assemble a report that will be presented to the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey Panel. The effort is led by Stephan Meyer, who is the PI of the NASA grant that provides funding, and is sponsored by the Primordial Polarization Program Definition Team.
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