Guest : Jeff McMahon (U. of Michigan) Jeff’s field of study is cosmology. During this podcast, we talked about his work on measurements of the cosmic microwave background and his involvement with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. Hosts : Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot Duration : 26 minutes Production : Mike Collicutt
Guest: Matt Mountain (Director of STScI) We had a very interesting and inspiring discussion about the Hubble Space Telescope, and the many discoveries made by this telescope. We also talked about Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, and its potential to search for life outside of our Solar system. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot Duration : 35 minutes Production: James O’Callaghan....
Guest : Anna Frebel (MIT). Anna studies very old stars, almost as old as the Universe itself. We discussed the implication of their existence and how she is looking for these peculiar and very faint stars. She also posts videos sharing her experiences at some of the largest telescopes in the world. Check out her YouTube channel . Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot. Duration : 28 minutes...
Guest : David Nataf (Australian National University). David observes the stars in the bulge of our Galaxy to measure their abundance of helium and their ages, an important step to understand the history of our Galaxy. Host : James Kennedy . Duration : 22 minutes. Production : James O’Callaghan...
Guest: Daisuke Nagai (Yale) We talked about computational cosmology, and how computer simulations can help us understand many things about the Universe. Hosts: Sebastien Guillot and James Kennedy Duration: 22 minutes...
Guest: Andrea Ghez (UCLA) Andrea visited the Physics Department to give the Anna I. McPherson Lectures 2013/2014 and it was our pleasure to record this podcast with her. We discussed her recent work on the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy, and the observational techniques developed to indirectly observe it. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot Duration: 25 minutes...
Guest: Anže Slosar (Brookhaven Nat.Lab.) By observing the light scattered from very distant quasars, Anže uses hydrogen in the line of sight of these quasars to understand the 3-dimensional structure on matter in the Universe. Hosts: Robert Archibald and Sebastien Guillot Duration: 23 minutes...
Guest: Douglas Scott (UBC) He is a member of the PLANCK Satellite team, and we talked about the last results from this great cosmological mission. Host: Ryan Lynch Duration: 17 minutes
Guest: Wesley Fraser (NRC-HIA) We talked about the Kuiper Belt, a zone of the outer Solar System, where the demoted planet Pluto sits, and the information we can get from Kuiper Belt objects. Host: Sebastien Guillot and Dave Tsang Duration: 20 minutes...
Guest/ Invité : Antoine Strugarek (Université de Montréal) We discussed his work on the numerical simulations of the Sun’s interior and the link with the observations of the Sun / Nous avons parlé de sa recherche sur les simulations numériques de l’interieur du Soleil, et le lien avec les observations du Soleil. Host: François Dufour and Sebastien Guillot Duration: 18 minutes...
Guest: Philip Muirhead (Boston University). He is interested in the wide variety of exoplanets orbiting other stars, especially low-mass stars. We talked about the detection of exoplanets and the results from the Kepler mission. Host: Ryan Lynch . Duration: 18 minutes.
Guest: Andrey Timokhin (NASA/GSFC). We discussed his research on pulsars and their emission mechanism. Hosts: Robert Archibald and James Kennedy . Duration: 18 minutes.
Guest: Peter Martin (CITA, UToronto). His current research focuses on the dust present in our Galaxy. We discussed what this galactic dust is, how it is detected, and what we can learn from it. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot . Duration: 25 minutes....
Guest : Robert Archibald (McGill) Robert Archibald published the first firm detection of an anti-glitch in a magnetar. An anti-glitch is a sudden decrease of the rotation period of a magnetar (a neutron star with a very large magnetic field), by opposition to the frequently-observed glitches which are sudden increase of the period (spin-up). This discevery can have important implications for the understanding of the internal structure of these extreme objects . Hosts : Ryan Lynch and Sebastien G...
Guest : Ryan Lynch (McGill) Ryan studies neutron stars and in particular, pulsars. He was part a collaboration who discovered a massive pulsar in a binary system, which allows to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Hosts : Robert Archibald and Sebastien Guillot Duration : 25 minutes...
Is it true that natural and sexual selection oppose each other? For instance, why should male peacocks have such large tails? Even Darwin noted this evolutionary puzzle: there are some traits of organisms that would seem to decrease their survival. This lecture will explore this situation using examples from Dr. Hendry’s research from a variety of species.
This lecture discusses ongoing work in Dr. Dirks’ lab that examines how children respond to different types of peer aggression, how those responses are perceived by important people in their social worlds, and how the effectiveness of a given response may vary depending upon who is enacting it and when they do it. Implications for intervention programs targeting children’s social functioning will also be discussed.
This lecture will show how sexual conflict or sexually antagonistic behaviour in insects can influence the evolution and elaboration of novel sexually dimorphic traits in distinct and potentially opposing ways.
This presentation features a lighthearted but scientific look at a topic of interest to all. The chemistry of the brain “in love” is examined, as well as the possible existence of aphrodisiacs and love potions. Chemical sex attractants in insects constitute the background to a discussion of possible analogues to these compounds in humans. This talk is of interest to anyone who ever has been, or ever plans to be “in love,” as well as to anyone else.
We live in a Universe of remarkable structure. From super-clusters of galaxies, tens of millions of light years across, to grand-design spiral galaxies and small rocky planets like Earth, structure exists on all scales. It wasn’t always this way: through the extraordinary advancements of observational cosmology of the last several decades, we now know the Universe was homogeneous at its beginning. While the physics which links the young and smooth Universe to its underlying Dark Matter skeleton ...
Guest: David H. Shoemaker (MIT). David is part of the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), and we discussed gravitational waves and how LIGO is expected to detect these ripples in the curvature of space-time predicted by Einstein. Hosts: Ryan Lynch , Sean Griffin , and Dave Tsang . Duration: 21 minutes....
Guest: Lucy Fortson (U. of Minnesota). While Lucy’s initial research interest were focused on high-energy astrophysics, she joined the Zooniverse collaboration (initially the GalaxyZoo project), an online citizen-science project. We discussed what the project its challenges are, as well as some of the science that resulted from it. If you are interest in joining one of the projects of Zooniverse , visit their page and select a project. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot . Duration: 33 minut...
Guest: Dan Stinebring (Oberlin College). The discussion was focused on gravitational waves and the NANOGrav collaboration . Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sean Griffin . Duration: 17 minutes....
Wonder why you keep hearing about so many new infectious diseases? How do we manage them? Come explore the perpetual arms race between humans and microbes as we both battle for survival in our modern world.
Guest: Aaron Parsons (UC, Berkeley). We talked about the PAPER experiment , which is hoping to shed light on the end of the “dark ages” of the Universe, just as the first stars and galaxies started to form. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Sean Griffin . Duration: 19 minutes....
Guest: Maxim Lyutikov (Purdue University). We discussed how and why pulsars emit radiation at radio wavelengths, and at higher energies in the gamma-ray and X-ray bands. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Dave Tsang . Duration: 19 minutes.
Special podcast with 2011 Physics Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt (Australian National University). We had the honor of receiving Brian Schmidt for a podcast interview, during which we talked about his discovery that the Universe was expanding. Brian Schmidt, Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Dave Tsang . Duration: 27 minutes....
Guest: Christian Ott (CalTech). We discussed the death of massive stars, called supernova explosions, and how we can try to understand them with computer simulations. Here is a link to the YouTube channel mentioned during the podcast: SXS Collaboration YouTube Channel . Hosts: Ryan Lynch and Dave Tsang . Duration: 24 minutes....
Guest: Joanna Rankin (U. of Vermont). In this episode, the discussion was focused on her work on the emission mechanism of pulsars, sometimes called “cosmic lighthouses”. Hosts: Sean Griffin , Ryan Lynch and Dave Tsang . Duration: 20 minutes....
Guest: Chris Thompson (CITA, U of Toronto). We discussed his research on gamma-ray bursts and magnetars. Hosts: James Kennedy , Ryan Lynch and Sebastien Guillot . Duration: 19 minutes....
