The Science@Cal Lecture Series
Science@Cal is proud to present a series of free, public science lectures on the third Saturday of every month. These talks are given by renowned UC Berkeley scientists and aimed at general audiences.
A Deep View of the Early Universe: Extreme Makeovers and Overweight Galaxies
On June 15 our talk will be given by Prof. Mariska Kriek and will be entitled "A Deep View of the Early Universe: Extreme Makeovers and Overweight Galaxies".
Galaxies are the building blocks of the Universe; massive structures that contain up to 100s of billions of stars. Galaxies in today's Universe show a striking diversity among their properties, with large variations in their appearance, age, size, weight, and stellar birth rate. Despite this diversity, galaxies can broadly be divided into two types: low-mass spiral galaxies with high stellar production rates, and massive old elliptical galaxies in which no new stars are being formed. Whereas this broad distinction was already recognized by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s, it has remained a puzzle how this dichotomy originated and how the different galaxy classes may be related to each other. In my talk I will discuss this issue and present our current view of how the different types of galaxies may have formed and have evolved over cosmic time.
Mariska Kriek received her PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands. On the basis of her dissertation, on the evolution of galaxies in the young universe, she was declared "Researcher of the Year 2007" by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Leiden University. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Christiaan Huygens Science Award by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. After a Clay Fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and a Russell Fellowship at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, she joined the faculty in the Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley.
Images courtesy Mariska Kriek and NASA
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Talk Details
Talks take place on the UC Berkeley campus at 11am. Doors open thirty minutes before the talk and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Each talk is planned to last an hour, plus time for at least a few questions at the end. We would like to start the talks on time, and avoid disruption from people entering the auditorium during the talks, so please try to arrive at least 10 minutes before the start. Most talks take place in the Genetics and Plant Biology Building, Room 100, on the north-west corner of the UC Berkeley campus (see map or images below), but some do not - please check the calendar below. Limited hourly pay parking is available on weekends on and nearby campus — please check the signs. We encourage you to take public transport — BART and bus lines are within walking distance. We also record the talks and post them on this site (click on the speaker names for previous months below). If you're nearby though we encourage you to come to the talks in person!
Left: Genetics and Plant Biology Building
Right: Lecture Theater Entrance
2013 Talk Calendar
| Date | Venue | Speaker | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 19 | 100 GPB | Dr. Mark Lescroart | The Shape of Our Thoughts (Visual Perception of Geometric Shape) |
| Feb 16 | 105 Stanley | Prof. John Dueber | Synthetic Biology: Engineering Living Cells with New Capabilities |
| Mar 16 | 100 GPB | Dr. Máté Ádámkovics | Cloudspotting at Saturn and Titan: Learning About Weather from a Billion Miles Away |
| Apr 20 | UC Berkeley | Cal Day | UC Berkeley's Open House |
| May 18 | 100 GPB | Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi | Connecting Infinitesimal to Infinity: The Search for Dark Matter |
| Jun 15 | 100 GPB | Prof. Mariska Kriek | A Deep View of the Early Universe: Extreme Makeovers and Overweight Galaxies |
| Jul 20 | 145 Dwinelle | TBA | TBA |
Aug 17 | 145 Dwinelle | Dr. Gregory Delory | Mars exploration (title TBA) |
| Sep 21 | 100 GPB | Prof. Gibor Basri | NASA's Kepler Mission: The Search for Earth 2 |
| Oct 19 | 100 GPB | TBA | TBA |
| Nov 16 | 100 GPB | TBA | TBA |
| Dec 21 | 100 GPB | TBA | TBA |
Previous Talks
You can watch the videos of previous talks in the series by clicking on the talk titles below:
Posted |
Title |
|---|---|
| December 1, 2010 - 1:00am | Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – How Resilient is Mother Nature? |
| November 1, 2010 - 12:00am | The Brain’s Got Rhythm: the Role of Neuronal Oscillations in Regulating Large-Scale Brain Networks |
| October 1, 2010 - 12:00am | What Can Neurobiology Say About Mind and Consciousness? |
| September 1, 2010 - 12:00am | Nature in the Hot Seat |
| August 1, 2010 - 12:00am | Neutrino Astronomy in Antarctica |
| July 1, 2010 - 12:00am | Planetary Magnetic Fields |
| June 1, 2010 - 12:00am | Magnetic Stars, Space Weather and Life: Stellar Activity and its Effect on Planets |
| May 1, 2010 - 12:00am | What Makes Water Wet? The Latest Word on the Most Important Molecule in the Universe |
| April 1, 2010 - 12:00am | The Kepler Mission: A Search for Earth-sized Planets |
| March 1, 2010 - 1:00am | How Attention Affects What You See |
Other Talk Videos
You can also check out the video of "The Great Debate: Are We Alone?" with Geoff Marcy and Dan Werthimer discussing the existence of intelligent life in our Galaxy, and a lecture by Geoff Marcy on the "Discovery of the First Earth-Size Planets and Prospects for Life in the Universe". Thanks to Chris Klein, Andrew Siemion, and James Anderson for producing these videos.
Cal Day 2013 Videos
Videos from UC Berkeley's Cal Day open house are also available. You can see Raphael Bousso talk about "Black Holes, Information, and the Quest for a Unified Theory of Nature", or Adrian Lee talk about "The Microwave Background: A Cosmic Time Machine".
Archives of 2009 International Year of Astronomy Talks
The Science@Cal lecture series was preceded by a 2009 lecture series presented by the Department of Astronomy as part of the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. To see videos of these talks, visit the astronomy lecture series website.
Questions?
Contact Steve Croft at scroft@astro.berkeley.edu.
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