Hosted monthly by the UC Berkeley Natural History Museums

East Bay Science Cafe is held the first Wednesday of every month in Cafe Valparaiso on Solano Avenue in Albany from 7 to 9pm. 1403 Solano Ave., Albany, California 94706

This cafe is an informal forum for discussing interesting and relevant scientific issues. The goal is to encourage public engagement with science by inviting members of the scientific community to present topics for a casual evening of conversation. Cafes may vary in length and format depending upon the speaker and the topic. Audience questions are encouraged both during and after!

Check out East Bay Science Cafe on our Facebook page.

This Month’s Cafe

Wednesday, June 4th, 2014
7:00-9:00pm

Matt Fillingim presents “Magnetism, Space Weather, and Atmospheric Evolution at Mars”

Description of the talk:
Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a global scale magnetic field. However, it does have intense and localized crustal magnetic fields. Earth’s planet-wide magnetic field is thought to shield our atmosphere from the solar wind. Without such a shield, the solar wind has impacted the atmosphere of Mars over the past few billion years, substantially changing it. Dr. Fillingim will discuss some of the recent ideas about the history of Mars’ magnetic field and how (and why) the atmosphere and climate of Mars has changed. He will also introduce the next mission to Mars, MAVEN, which launched last November, which is designed to decipher the atmospheric history of Mars.

Dr. Fillingim’s Bio:
Matt Fillingim has been a research scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2002. Prior to that, he received his Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Washington in Seattle and both his B.S. and M.S. in Space Sciences from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, FL. His current research focuses on the magnetic fields and tenuous, ionized gas (aka plasma) surrounding Earth, the Moon, and Mars. He has also been the astronomy instructor at Berkeley City College since 2008.

Upcoming Talks:

• September 3rd, 2014 — Dr. Rikke Reese Naesborg, Research Associate, University & Jepson Herbaria.
  
  
• October 1st, 2014 — Dr. Peggy Hellweg, Operations Manager of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.
  
  
• November 5th, 2014 — Dr. Whendee Silver, expert in ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry, Professor in Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley.
  
  
• December 3rd, 2014 — Katherine Wilkin, graduate student in Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management. Presenting on California’s fire history and future with climate change.