Events

Given the recent interest in Comet NEOWISE, this week we'll have an informal discussion about this naked-eye astronomical phenomenon and about comets in general.  We'll start with a few members of our Department sharing the images of this object that they took themselves.  Then our own Brett Gladman will give a short popular-level introduction on comets in general and some specific information about comet NEOWISE.  We'll finish with plenty of time time for questions.

PhD Final Oral Examination

The analysis of Gaia DR2 data has revealed previously unknown accretion events of dwarf galaxies through detailed chemo-dynamical analyses of stars in the Milky Way (i.e., Gaia-Enceladus, Helmi et al. 2018; Gaia-Sausage, Belokurov et al. 2018; Gaia-Sausage, Myeong et al. 2019), and the unexpected result that many very metal-poor stars have nearly circular planar orbits (Sestito et al. 2019).

As an "accidental" food theorist, with both a science and social science background, I sometimes find myself struggling to understand a paradigmatic split within agricultural thought. On one side, technological advance has allowed us to cheaply and easily feed more people than ever before, but at a cost. The industrial food system is vulnerable, due to its reliance on cheap labour and its long supply chains.

The discovery of billion solar mass quasars at redshifts of 6–7 challenges our understanding of the early Universe; how did such massive objects form in the first billion years? Observational constraints and numerical simulations increasingly favour the "direct collapse" scenario. In this case, an atomically-cooled halo of primordial composition accretes rapidly onto a single protostellar core, ultimately collapsing through the Chandrasekhar-Feynman instability to produce a supermassive (~100,000 solar mass) "seed" black hole.

²²⁵Ac is an alpha-emitting radionuclide that has shown remarkable potential for use in targeted alpha therapy of late stage metastatic diseases, most notably prostate cancer. However, ²²⁵Ac-radiopharmaceutical development remains limited by the insufficient availability of the radionuclide, despite multiple efforts to increase ²²⁵Ac supply via alternative methods that avoid the use of nuclear weapons material.

XENON1T, the world's most sensitive dark matter detector, found a ~3.5 sigma excess of low energy (2-5 keV) electronic recoil events. This could be a first hint of axions produced in the sun, a nonzero neutrino magnetic moment, or absorption of bosonic dark matter. However, more mundane explanations remain possible, most importantly a trace of tritium contaminating the detector. I will summarize the result and discuss the evidence in favor of these different interpretations.

Meeting URL
https://bluejeans.com/522666677?src=join_info

Meeting ID
522 666 677

Wayfinding Under Blackfoot Skies is a new project at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory. This project involves the development of scientific based programs that investigate and explore Indigenous methods of celestial observation and the practical articulation of navigating by the stars. The core themes for the Wayfinding under Blackfoot Skies programs are a joining of Indigenous and Western science ideologies. I will talk about my research and how the observatory is working towards blending traditional knowledge into our programming and exhibits.

Join us for this set of short presentations:

Carl Michal "NMR at home: how hair conditioner is just like brains"
Alex Weber "Slacklining and highlining"
Robert Beda "Physics Mountain: 5 Lessons from Celeste"
Paul Ripoche "Why I started making bread before the pandemic"
Alexandra Qi "Recreating historical vehicles in miniature"
Bretta Russell-Schulz "Crochet: A beginner's guide for scientists"
Guy Leckenby "Defying gravity? The physics of the skateboard ollie"
 

This talk will be an overview of science goals and technology drivers for studying the far-infrared sky.