Colloquia Schedule Spring 2011
Colloquia are on Tuesdays (unless otherwise indicated) at 3:30 pm in RLM 15.216B
Dust in the Early Universe INAF/Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma host: Volker Bromm |
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Magnetic Relaxation in ICM Bubbles and the Magnetic Flux Problem in Star Formation University of Bonn (TCC Tinsley Scholar) host: Craig Wheeler |
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Reading the Record of Ancient Impacts California Institute of Technology host: Pawan Kumar |
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Star Formation in Galaxy Clusters Over the Past 10 Billion Years Texas A&M University and University of Zurich host: Neal Evans |
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McDonald Observatory Board of Visitors Meeting (Austin) |
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19th Annual Great Lecture in Astronomy Exploring Newly Discovered Worlds with the Giant Magellan Telescope University of Texas at Austin |
Is Inhomogeneity Important in Cosmology? The real universe is comprised of a cosmic web of structures, with
vast walls and voids on larger scales and mostly empty space on smaller
scales. Is this significant for cosmology, or can we ignore it and used
the standard linearized Robertson-Walker models with impunity? There
are three ways inhomogeneities can affect the values we assign
cosmological parameters on the basis of astronomical observations.
Firstly there may be back-reaction from small scale inhomogeneities
to large scale dynamics; this almost certainly occurs, but is probably
not important, although there are some caveats to that statement.
Secondly the observational properties of a universe with major voids
can be significantly different from those of a smoothed out model:
this has the potential to cause significant re-evaluation of the
interpretation of the supernova observations. Thirdly a large-scale
underdensity, with our Galaxy somewhere near the centre, can mimic
the apparent acceleration of the universe, indeed the observations
can be explained by inhomogeneous models with no dark energy present.
These models are philosophically unpopular, but philosophy will have
to give way to observational tests that can check whether the
Copernican Principle is indeed satisfied or not. Recent claims that
these models have been observationally disproved are overstated:
the required perturbation calculation have not yet been properly
deployed. University of Cape Town host: Tanja Rindler-Daller |
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Exploration of the Circum-Galactic Medium at High Redshifts California Institute of Technology (Tinsley Visiting Professor) host: Karl Gebhardt |
Clarifying our View of Star Formation in Extreme Environments with Adaptive Optics California Institute of Technology host: Jenny Greene |
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DeVaucouleurs Medalist Chemical Abundances in the Oldest Galactic Stars: Globular Clusters vs. the Halo Field UCOLICK host: Chris Sneden |
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DEEP2 and Beyond: Studying Galaxy Evolution and Large-Scale Structure with Deep Surveys University of Pittsburgh (TCC Visiting Speaker) host: Eiichiro Komatsu |
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Spring Break: 14-18 March: No talk scheduled |
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Diverse Energy Sources for Supernovae UCSB/Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (Tinsley Visiting Professor) host: Donald Winget |
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Exploding Stars! UCSB/Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (Tinsley Visiting Professor) host: Donald Winget |
Recent Advances in our Understanding of Enigmatic Gamma-ray Bursts University of Texas at Austin host: TBD |
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Physical Properties of Kepler's Small Exoplanets Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics host: Jenny Greene |
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The Physical Properties of Lyman-alpha Emitters from z=2 to 3 Pennsylvania State University host: Karl Gebhardt |
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Thermal Tides: An Explanation for the Inflated Radii of the Hot Jupiters Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton host: Jenny Greene |
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Magnetic Reconnection and the Evolution of Large Scale Magnetic Fields McMaster University, Ontario, Canada host: Craig Wheeler |
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Title: TBA Affiliation: TBD host: TBD |
Visitors to the Department of Astronomy can find detailed information and maps on our Visiting Austin Page.
Please report omissions/corrections to: G. Orris at argus@astro.as.utexas.edu.
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