Dr. Johannes Hirn

This talk requires no video projector

Mubdi Rahman

The passion for astronomy is universal and even plays itself out in music. In this talk, I’ll be looking at tracks from the Billboard Hot 100 and the astronomy concepts they evoke: from general relativity to the birth of stars. Come join us for a whimsical take on North America’s favourite music and Astronomy!

Mubdi Rahman

If there’s one thing that today’s science teaches us, it’s that the stories of the Universe are dramatically interconnected in unexpected ways. From the most powerful explosions in the galaxy to following the stars across the Atlantic, join us for a journey across space and time, exploring the connections throughout the Universe.

Juan Diego Soler

In the coldest and driest place on Earth, scientists, adventurers, explorers, penguins and seals meet to observe the Universe. But why do astronomers love Antarctica so much? What kind of adventures and exciting observations do they experience in this unexplored land?

Join us to hear the story of BLAST-Pol, the balloon-borne telescope successfully launched this past December from Antarctica, and of the group of U of T students who worked on it.

Dr. Johannes Hirn

Sergei Ossokine

Time is a widely discussed concept in science, both because it is difficult and fascinating. It underlies all our everyday experiences and we often don’t stop to think about what it really means. In this talk, we shall explore time as viewed by some of the greatest physicists, from Aristotle to Einstein. Along the way, we’ll have to reevaluate how we view time. We’ll learn that time is relative and that it is inextricably linked to space. We’ll also explore why eggs don’t unbreak themselves, and that black holes can make time slow down. We’ll conclude with the (im?)possibility of time travel, and the idea of time paradoxes.

Dr. Johannes Hirn

This talk requires no video projector

Dr. Johannes Hirn

Nick Tacik

Black holes are perceived as the most strange and mysterious objects in the universe. They represent the most extreme incarnation of the gravitational force, and they challenge our conceptions of space and time. But perhaps what makes them the most mysterious is the way they are portrayed in popular culture and science fiction. They are monstrous holes in the sky with incredible sucking power, beacons of time travel, and gateways to another dimension or even another universe. Or are they? Drawing upon popular culture for examples of bad black hole physics, I will discuss what science actually has to say about black holes, and what is pure science fiction. We will discover that black holes are, in reality, fairly simple objects.

Dr. Anne-Marie Weijmans

The Big Bang, along with evolution and anthropogenic climate change, is one of the most controversial and poorly understood Big Ideas in science. Like many Big Ideas, the Big Bang seems pretty simple on the surface, but it is actually a very subtle and complex idea. It is easily misunderstood, even by scientists. In this talk, I will discuss the origins of the Big Bang theory, its most essential features, and the evidence which supports it. I will also attempt to dispel the common misunderstanding that the Big Bang cannot be reconciled with popular religious conceptions of the origin of the Universe. I will do so by tracing the Big Bang theory to its origins among the Catholic clergy and even further back through a long history of Christian thinkers. I will attempt to show that the common perception that science and religion are diametrically opposed isn’t supported by historical fact. I will, in a sense, try to “unteach the controversy”. Ample opportunity will be provided for questions and discussion, both during and after the talk.