Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures
Listen to exciting, non-technical talks on some of the most interesting developments in astronomy and space science. Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. Speakers include a wide range of noted scientists, explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The series is organized and moderated by Foothill's astronomy instructor emeritus Andrew Fraknoi and jointly sponsored by the Foothill College Physical Science, Math, and Engineering Division, the SETI Institute, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the University of California Observatories (including the Lick Observatory.)
Episodes
50 episodes
Observing with the James Webb Space Telescope: Glimpsing the First Stars
Nov. 13, 2024Dr. Dan Coe (Space Telescope Science Institute)The Webb Telescope was designed to look back in time, to study the first generation of stars, and reveal our cosmic origins. Now in its second year of operation, JWST has a...
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Season 25
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Episode 2
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1:04:26
Profound and Staggering: The Impact on Religion of the Discovery of Life around Other Stars
Recorded Oct. 9, 2024Astronomers have now discovered thousands of planets in orbit around other stars. Dr. Weintraub discusses those discoveries, and predicts the progress astronomers are likely to make in their more detailed studies of the...
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Season 25
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Episode 1
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1:20:58
The Copernicus Complex: Are We Special in the Cosmos
With Prof. Caleb Scharf (Columbia University)Is humanity on Earth special or unexceptional? Extraordinary discoveries in astronomy and biology have revealed a universe filled with endlessly diverse planetary systems, and a picture...
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Season 16
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Episode 1
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1:18:53
Black Widow Pulsars: The Vengeful Corpses of Stars
With Dr. Roger Romani (Stanford University):NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed a violent high-energy universe full of stellar explosions, black hole jets, and pulsing stars. These cosmic objects are often faint when o...
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Season 15
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Episode 3
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1:01:47
Europa Clipper: Exploring Jupiter's Ocean World
Presenter is the Project Scientist, Dr. Robert Pappalardo (JPL)May 22, 2024Jupiter's moon Europa may be a habitable world, containing the “ingredients” necessary for life within its ocean. Data from NASA’s earlier Galileo mission su...
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Season 24
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Episode 6
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1:22:35
The Allure of the Multiverse (with Dr. Paul Halpern)
Apr. 17, 2024In this talk, physicist and popular author Paul Halpern (St. Joseph's College) examines the history of the concept of a multiverse in science, and discusses the ideas by Einstein and other noted physicists that have led ...
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Season 24
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Episode 5
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1:16:29
The Black Hole Wars: My Battle with Stephen Hawking
With Dr. Leonard Susskind (Stanford University)Black holes, the collapsed remnants of the largest stars, provide a remarkable laboratory where the frontier concepts of our understanding of nature are tested at their extreme limits. For more...
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Season 10
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Episode 1
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1:34:51
Black Holes and the Technology to Find Them
A Non-technical Talk by Dr. Jessica Lu (University of California, Berkeley) on March 13, 2024The population of black holes, objects left over from dead stars, is almost entirely unexplored. Only about two dozen black holes are con...
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Season 24
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Episode 4
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1:02:42
Exploring the Gravitational Wave Universe
Speaker: Dr. Brian Lantz (Stanford University)Feb. 7, 2024Measuring gravitational waves is a revolutionary new way to do astronomy. They were predicted by Einstein, but it was not until 2015, that LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gr...
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Season 24
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Episode 3
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1:09:36
Water Above, Water Below: The Many Roles of Water in Making Planets Habitable
Dr. Laura Schaefer (Stanford University):Water is everywhere. Its atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, are the first and fifth most abundant elements in the universe. Water is found in abundance in many environments; it finds its way into planets of...
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Season 24
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Episode 2
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1:14:58
The Peril and Profit of Near-Earth Objects
A Talk by Dr. Robert Jedicke (U of Hawaii)Oct. 11, 2023Near-Earth objects present both an existential threat to human civilization and an extraordinary opportunity to help our exploration and expansion across the solar system. Dr. J...
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Season 24
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Episode 1
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1:10:15
SPECIAL: An Interview with Frank Drake: The Founder of SETI Science (conducted by Andrew Fraknoi)
June 2012Frank Drake (1930-2022) was known as the "father of SETI science" -- he was the scientist who conducted the first radio survey for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, and came up with the formula for estimating the likelih...
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Season 23
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Episode 0
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44:02
Ashes to Ashes, Earth to Earth, Dust to Dust: The Birth and Death of Worlds
with Dr. Eugene Chiang (University of California, Berkeley)June 21, 2023We now know that our solar system is but one of countless others. Where did all these planets come from? What are their fates, and ours? Dr. Chiang describes the li...
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Season 23
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Episode 6
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1:05:09
An Eclipse Double-Header: Two North American Eclipses of the Sun in 2023 & 2024 (with Andrew Fraknoi)
North America will be treated to two eclipses of the Sun in the 2023-24 school year: an annular eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023 and a total eclipse on Apr. 8, 2024. Some 500 million people will be in a position to see at least a partial eclipse ...
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Season 23
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Episode 5
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1:02:49
The First Results from the James Webb Space Telescope (with Dr. Alex Filippenko)
Dr. Alex Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley)Mar. 8, 2023We have a new supersensitive eye in the cosmic sky. Parked nearly one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is 100 times more sensitive than t...
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Season 23
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Episode 4
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1:29:44
Our Boldest Effort to Answer our Oldest Question: Breakthrough-Listen Search for Intelligent Life
For centuries, humans have gazed at the night sky and wondered if any intelligent life forms like us might be out there. In 2015, the Breakthrough Foundation gave a $100 million grant to the University of California at Berkeley to underta...
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Season 23
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Episode 3
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1:25:17
Spacetime Symphony: Gravitational Waves from Merging Black Holes
Talk by Dr. Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University)Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. They travel at the speed of light, but are much harder to detect than light waves. On September 14,...
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Season 17
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Episode 2
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1:09:51
100 Years of Einstein's Relativity (And How it Underlies Our Modern Understanding of the Universe)
With Dr. Jeffrey Bennett (University of Colorado)2015 marked the 100th anniversary of Einstein's completion of his General Theory of Relativity, the comprehensive theory of space, time, and gravity. In everyday language, Dr. Bennett exp...
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Season 16
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Episode 6
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1:19:35
Space Weather and the Question of Human Survivability (with Dr. Tom Berger)
The Sun can unleash violent “space weather” -- storms that can radiate X-rays and even gamma rays into space, send giant clouds of magnetic plasma slamming into the Earth and other planets, and spray firehoses of charged particles throughout in...
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Season 23
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Episode 2
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1:32:11
Is Anyone out There: The Hundred-Million Dollar "Breakthrough: Listen" Project
with Dr. Dan Werthimer of the University of California, BerkeleyWhat is the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe and how might we detect signals from alien civilizations? Dr. Werthimer describes current and future...
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Season 17
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Episode 5
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1:17:59
A Planet for Goldilocks: Kepler and the Search for Living Worlds
With Dr. Natalie Batalha (NASA, Kepler Mission Project Scientist)NASA's Kepler Mission launched in 2009 with the objective of finding "Goldilocks planets" orbiting other stars like our Sun -- those that are not too hot, not too cold, bu...
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Season 18
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Episode 2
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1:29:04
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The Fast Radio Sky: A New Window on the Violent Universe
In this episode, Dr. Victoria Kaspi (McGill University) introduces us to a brand-new mystery in the skies -- superfast bursts of radio waves whose source is still unknown. These energetic bursts come from all over the sky (and all over th...
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Season 23
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Episode 1
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1:24:58
Colliding Neutron Stars, Gravity Waves, and the Origin of the Heavy Elements
with Prof. Eliot Quataert (University of California, Berkeley)In the previous decade, one third of the world's astronomers became involved in a single project -- observing a distant and violent event, when two "star corpses"...
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Season 18
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Episode 3
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1:21:21
When Mars Was Like Earth: Five Years of Exploration with the Curiosity Rover
Speaker: Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory For five years, Curiosity explored Gale Crater, one of the most intriguing locations on Mars -- once the site of an ancient lake. In this talk, the mission's P...
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Season 18
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Episode 4
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1:30:43
Rubble Piles in the Sky: The Science, Exploration, and Danger of Near-Earth Asteroids
with Dr, Michael Busch (SETI Institute)Near-Earth asteroids are a population of small bodies whose orbits around the Sun cross or come near our planet’s orbit. They turn out to be unusual physical environments: essentially rubble pile...
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Season 18
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Episode 5
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1:02:14
