Astronomy Days continues at museum
A few times a day the sky is lit up by brilliant flashes created by fantastically powerful explosions occurring daily in distant galaxies throughout the universe. These gamma-ray bursts have been studied for decades by scientists and researchers, including at Los Alamos.
This evening, Laboratory technical staff member Ed Fenimore of Space Sciences and Applications (IRS-1) will talk about gamma-ray bursts at the latest Astronomy Days lecture in the Bradbury Science Museum. The talk begins at 6:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public.
Astronomy Days lectures at the downtown museum help introduce Earthwatch students visiting the Laboratory to the field of astrophysics. The high-school-age students accepted into the Earthwatch Student Challenge Awards Program participate in a variety of activities over a two-week period coordinated and designed by Los Alamos technical staff members.
The evening talks also provide an opportunity to discuss the nature of scientific research and how understanding the process for that research is crucial to planning one's career and training as a scientist.
Since the 1960s, scientists have used orbiting platforms to measure high-energy radiation (X-rays and gamma rays), finding a range of perplexing cosmic burps, buzzes and pops. These are now explained by a variety of extreme mechanisms involving strange objects such as neutron stars, black holes and quasars. The most energetic and powerful of these phenomena are gamma-ray bursts, which typically last less than a minute, and emit a large majority of their energy in the form of high-energy photons called gamma rays.
Astronomy Days continues Thursday when Los Alamos researcher Falk Herwig of Theoretical Astrophysics (T-6) is scheduled to talk about the origin of the elements. His talk will focus on new quantitative and qualitative data researchers are using to help solve the puzzle of the origin of elements, the vast majority of which are made in the stars and in the supernova explosions that terminate the life of massive stars.
The series concludes Friday when Los Alamos scientist Michelle Thomsen of ISR-1 talks about "Cassini at Saturn." Her talk focuses on the journey of the Cassini spacecraft, from its Florida launch to settling into orbit around Saturn in July 2004 and the data it is returning to scientists on Earth. Cassini is returning spectacular images of the planet and its rings and moons, as well as information about Saturn's magnetosphere, the huge bubble in interplanetary space carved out of Saturn's magnetic field.
Previous Astronomy Days presentations have explored cosmology, asteroids and comets and their impact on Earth and water on Mars.
The Bradbury Science Museum is located at 15th Street and Central Avenue in Los Alamos. Museum hours, apart from the special events listed above are 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday and Monday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. The museum is part of the Public Affairs Office.
For more information, contact Pat Berger at 5-0896.
