#9 OUTER SPACE
September 10, 2016
Presentation #1: MOONS! by Kate Howells
Maybe you think you’re hot stuff because you can name all the planets in the solar system, and even know to leave out Pluto. Ah, and of course you know our beloved moon, Earth’s little buddy. But what about the other moons? These are the most overlooked, yet in many cases the most awesome things in our cosmic neighbourhood. In this talk, Kate Howells will introduce you to the solar system’s best kept secret: its moons.
Kate works with the Planetary Society, an international non-profit organization that works to educate and engage the world in space exploration. She has a background in cognitive psychology and space policy, and would 100% go into space if given the option. (Not forever though).
Presentation #2: From Ziggy Stardust to Explosions in the Sky: A Few (billion) Years in the LIFE of a STAR by Mathieu Vick
Are we really made of stardust? Is there anything special about the Sun? How can we know what's going on within a star if we can't see inside it? How can a star be a giant and then a dwarf? What's a black hole? Everything you wanted to know about stars but couldn't learn from Entertainment Tonight.
Mathieu obtained his co-directed PhD from Université de Montréal and Université Montpellier II in 2010. His thesis looked into the evolution of stars with peculiar surface chemistries. After spending 10 years in the field, he hopped onto May 2011's orange wave and started working for the NDP on Parliament Hill. He's been with the Canadian Union of Public Employees for two years and has just recently gotten back into research by taking over CUPE-Québec's anti-privatization position.
Presentation #3: Get On With It, I Know It's Hard
Rebecca Noone emailed theoretical and experimental physicists at the world’s top universities and research centres asking: How do you negotiate the everyday while professionally set against the backdrop of infinity?
She wondered: What is there to learn from the theoretical physicists who devote their life to decoding the universe and then manage to order off a menu or sit in rush-hour traffic? How do they study quantum physics, string theory, or the multiverse and then negotiate the day-to- day? Perplexed by these tensions, she sent hundreds of emails and received over ninety responses. Here, she will share some of these exchanges.
Rebecca Noone is a Canadian artist and a PhD student at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her work takes on the concept of the active archive- that act of intervening in the everyday to collect situations and moods and thoughts that go past unnoticed; particularly, those banal futilities and the muted hopes implicit in our everyday encounters and interactions with
information, systems, and technologies.