Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Why Doesn't the Universe Suck?
Or why scientists go to the ends of the Earth to understand the evolving history of the Universe.

Eight years ago, NCSWA members heard from Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, about his groundbreaking work that used supernova observations to show that the universe was accelerating rather than collapsing from the gravity of its combined structures. This finding stunned cosmologists because it suggests that there is a repulsive force, dubbed dark energy, that works against gravity and may account for the surprising acceleration that Perlmutter and his colleagues observed. Since then, the astrophysics community has been busy proposing and building new observatories to investigate the history of the universe and dark energy which, with its material cousin, dark matter, is invisible to normal observations but is estimated to make up 90% of the universe.

The newest gem in this collection of observatories is a 10-meter telescope just completed at the South Pole. In mid-February, the $19.2 million South Pole Telescope observed first light after completing a breakneck construction schedule that started in October with the first shipment of telescope parts to the bottom of the world. For our spring dinner meeting, we’ll hear from one of the senior scientists for the SPT, William Holzapfel, who led a team from UC Berkeley that built and installed a 1000-array detector for the telescope. Bill just returned from the South Pole and he’ll talk about the work he did there this season and the secrets he hopes this telescope and other experiments will reveal about the history and composition of the universe. He’ll describe previous experiments he’s conducted at the South Pole and other observatories and the current state of knowledge about cosmic microwave background, the afterglow left from the Big Bang.

A native of Pittsburgh, Holzapfel describes himself as surviving an early program of experimentation with motorcycles and explosives to attend Rennselear Polytechnic Institute where he received a B.A. in physics in 1987. He completed his Ph.D. in physics at U.C. Berkeley in 1996 and was a Fermi-McCormick fellow at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty at Berkeley in 1998. He was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 2004 for his innovative work in designing and building numerous experiments to measure the fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background as well as for his leadership in the analysis and interpretation of these results. Dr. Holzapfel’s contributions are widely credited with ushering in the current era of precision cosmology, which allows scientists to use experimental data to constrain various models of the Universe.  
 
 
WHEN: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, 2007
 
WHERE: Pyramid Alehouse, 901 Gilman St., Berkeley.
 
MENU:

• Mixed green salad with herb vinaigrette
• Pasta Cavatappi served with roasted chicken, fresh tomatoes, kalamata olives, oregano, fresh capers and Reggiano Parmesan cheese.
• Blackened salmon with citrus aioli
• Roasted seasonal vegetables
• Alehouse rice pilaf
• Herbed Dinner Rolls
• Tea, coffee and soda
• Brownies for dessert

If you want to pay by check, please make out a check payable to NCSWA and mail it by March 21st to:

Robert Sanders
1512 Holly St.
Berkeley, CA 94703