Cosmic inhabitants lecture 20.6.13

[Guest dawson]

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/physics/events/public-science-lecture-20-06-13.aspx

I hope to go.

James

[Guest Tibbz2]

The downsides of living in the middle of nowhere...

[Craig]

That would actually be a good talk to go on.

[Guest dawson]

Lets go dressed as little green men

[Guest xanthic]

Or Giger's alien

I might be up for that if I can get out of work in time.

[Perkil8r]

Hmm....... tempting.

[Guest dawson]

Summary of the talk

 

It was by a third year PhD student. It was her first big lecture and she did really well. She looked at her front row supervisors during the questions at the end for support and she kept getting lots of nods and smiles from them which was nice. My memory isn't great and so I know I've missed things out of this summary and I may well have made things up or say things which didn't happen in the talk and which I've remembered from other events!

 

The talk started off very gently; classification of galaxies (interactive and we all had to raise our hands if we thought they were elliptical, spiral or irregular); she showed something similar to this:

 

http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/heic9902o.jpg

 

I have never read much about galaxy classification, so I didn't know there were two types of spiral galaxies (normal ones and ones with a bar ( at their core). Fascinating. She also talked a bit about Dwarf Galaxies, which just looked like conventional clusters to me; again more for me to read about at some stage.

 

She talked about galaxy colours, and that red ones are generally old, and the blue/white ones are younger and star forming. She also said that the colour of a galaxy is generally linked to its type (elliptical ones yellow, spiral and irregular tend to be younger and bluer/whiter). In the questions at the end, someone asked about what would happen if two red galaxies collided, and I think she said it may rejuvenate the resultant galaxy which could turn blue/white and become star forming again, but you might want to check this.  Then she talked about how galaxies can interact and collide. She showed a slide of several sets of spiral galaxies colliding, like this:

 

http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/NAS/NAS_GAL2.gif

 

She talked about how the Milky Way (I don't know where she was from originally, but in her lovely accent she kept saying "Meeky Way" which made me warm to her even more) was probably going to collide with the Andromeda Galaxy.

 

Then somehow she got on to black holes, and the evidence we have for them, including an animation like this one showing how the stars at the very centre of the Meeky Way have an odd orbit around something which we can't see in any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum:

 

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE_uPcRV5hE

 

Then she got onto dark matter. I have to confess I got an email at this stage and I got distracted for about 2 minutes, but when I got back with the program[me] (I never remember which program or programme is which), she showed us an image like this and said it consisted of filaments merging into clusters, and between the filaments were voids:

 

http://www.dapla.org/images/brain2.jpg

 

She said we've known there must be some structure holding the universe up (my words not hers) as scientists have seen that galaxies follow pathways and sometimes cluster together, but we've never been able to visualise this framework before. She went on and spent some time talking about 'lensing'; as light passes something with mass, it gets bent (I know the feeling), and somehow they used Hubble and some fancy maths to work out how much 'dark' mass there was between us and the distant galaxy, to build a 2D map of a filament. They somehow they made this 2D map 3D (sorry, I was a bit lost at this stage, I only got a C at GCSE physics). Then she took us on a 3D tour of the cosmic web, showing how the filaments seemed to funnel the galaxies within it then into the clusters, a bit like this (the whole clip is good, but the 3D animation is at about 2 minutes in):

 

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJyRQriYML8

 

And then she said a bit more, but I can't remember what! Sorry.

 

And then there were questions, most of which I didn't understand; talk about gravity, and dark energy, and things about things I'd never heard of. I'd make a useless science reporter!

 

She suggested she would make her slides available, I'm not sure if that was just to the lots of geeky astro-students in the audience or to the wider public, if anyone wants I can email her and see if she will release them.

 

So it was good. Really glad I went. It wasn't about inhabitants in the living inhabitant terms, but in terms of galaxies and the like.

 

The next Public Science Lecture at Nottingham University is 19th September by Dr Richard Alexander on "Exoplanets: Hunting the Other Worlds". There are other science related talks in the mean time.

 

James

[Guest dawson]

This place has your geeky name all over it Tibbz2   You'll probably get geeky-Leigh and geeky-Mike trying to sneak in on all your lectures too!

[Guest Tibbz2]

 

Then she got onto dark matter. I have to confess I got an email at this stage and I got distracted for about 2 minutes, but when I got back with the program[me] (I never remember which program or programme is which), she showed us an image like this and said it consisted of filaments merging into clusters, and between the filaments were voids:

 

 

 

Whoops

 

 

 

This place has your geeky name all over it Tibbz2    You'll probably get geeky-Leigh and geeky-Mike trying to sneak in on all your lectures too!

 

 

It's on my top spot for when I apply

Edited June 20, 2013 by Tibbz2

[Tweedledee]

I would have loved to go to the lecture, but your write up with videos and drawings was most interesting, thanks James.

[Perkil8r]

Bugger, I forgot it was today

[Guest Tibbz2]

Powerpoint from the presentation for anyone to download if you would like: http://www.2shared.com/document/0d4QA15v/Inhabitantstalk.html

 

Also links to the videos that were shown are below:

 

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1106a/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws2V-Sv8-GQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_gggKHvfGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIXAKkuShQ

Edited June 21, 2013 by Tibbz2

[Guest dawson]

Thanks for sorting that out tibbz

 

JD

[Guest xanthic]

Cheers Tibbz. Just had a scan through them. Sadly wasn't able to make it

[Guest Tibbz2]

Thanks for sorting that out tibbz

 

JD

 

Np, not like I don't have the time now

[Guest dawson]

Rub it in why don't you!!!! At least we don't have to spend the next two years doing REALLY HARD a'levels

Jd

[Guest Tibbz2]

You have a point