Relief of our Planet, Dynamic Climates, Gender Equity, and International Physics
For the week of November 8, here are colloquium-like webinars of potential interest for UCI's Department of Physics & Astronomy, and beyond.
Forward to the year 2420: Diagnosis, Prognosis and Prescription (IOP)
Tuesday, November 9, 2021, 10 am PT
During this series of lectures and discussions, we will have considered many different facets inspired by the life and work of Sir Francis Bacon, and the updating or transposing those ideas to our modern times. We now roll the clock forward 400 years, and consider how our descendants will look back on us? Are we embracing the ethos of doing science “for the relief of man’s estate”, or with a more modern interpretation, “for the relief of our planet”? Certainly, it seems the case that we are facing problems now that are exacerbated by over-population and the over-use of planetary resources: COVID, Climate Change, Inequalities, Human Rights abuse, and a mismatch between the leadership need and the abilities of governmental structures to deliver that leadership.
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Dynamic climates: what can other planets tell us about the Earth? (The Open University)
Tuesday, November 9, 10 am PT
Stephen Lewis (The Open University)
Every large body (even dwarf planets and moons) in the Solar System, except Mercury, is surrounded by a gaseous atmosphere. The largest planets of all, Jupiter and the other Giant Planets, are mainly gases from the clouds down to great depths. Even on the planets which are mainly rocky — Venus, Earth and Mars — the presence of the atmosphere alters the surface conditions to a remarkable extent. On Venus, the greenhouse effect has produced a toxic world, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead. On Mars, the surface is a frozen desert. But there is evidence that these climates have changed over the lifetime of the planets, and that they might once have been more hospitable.
The Earth has the most complex and unusual atmosphere of all. Without our atmosphere, there could be no life. But the presence of life has in turn changed the atmosphere that it depends on. Research into planetary atmospheres offers context to the urgent need to understand the changes in our own environment.
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Towards Gender Equity: New Directions & Steps (APS)
Panel discussion: Thursday, November 11, 2021, 5:30am - 7:45 am PT
Scientific talks by eminent women scientists: Friday, November 12 6:15am - 8:30 am PT
APS in partnership with the Indian Physics Association (IPA), is hosting a webinar, “Towards Gender Equity: New Directions & Steps,” which will feature a panel discussion and two scientific talks.
The two talks will feature the following topics and speakers:
Designing Nanomaterials One Atom at a Time: Shobhana Narasimhan, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru
Cosmological Horizons and Information: Eva Silverstein, Dept. of Physics, Stanford University, & Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics
Due to limited capacity, after the registration has filled up, interested participants will be able to access a live stream of the event on the IPA YouTube channel.
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A future built on international engagement (Fermilab)
Monday, November 15, 7 am PT
Joe Lykken (Fermilab)
Future scientific breakthroughs in high-energy physics will require unprecedented levels of international engagement, building on the successful model of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Joe Lykken, Fermilab deputy director for research, will describe how Fermilab is moving forward rapidly with CERN and other international partners to realise this vision.
The questions under scrutiny range from the nature of the Higgs field to the question of whether neutrinos play a role in the matter-antimatter asymmetry observed in the universe. PIP-II, an upgrade to the Fermilab accelerator complex that includes a leading-edge superconducting linear accelerator, is already under construction, with major “in-kind” contributions and expertise from partners in India, Italy, the UK, France and Poland. PIP-II will enable the world’s most intense beam of neutrinos for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), which will deploy 70,000 tonnes of liquid argon detectors in a deep underground site 1300 km from Fermilab. DUNE was formulated as an international project from the start, and now includes more than a thousand collaborators from 30 countries. Two large prototype detectors for DUNE have been successfully constructed and tested at the CERN Neutrino Platform. DUNE will have remarkable capabilities to determine how the properties of neutrinos have shaped our universe. At the same time, Fermilab has been developing and building next-generation superconducting magnets that will be deployed in the HL-LHC accelerator at CERN, and is the US lead for ambitious upgrades to the CMS experiment for the HL-LHC era. These technological capabilities will also make Fermilab an important partner for the proposed Future Circular Collider.