The University of Missouri-Columbia Department of Physics & Astronomy, in conjunction with the Central Missouri Astronomical Association , presents:

"Cosmic Conversations" is a lecture series hosted by the Department of Physics & Astronomy in conjunction with the Laws Observatory and the Central Missouri Astronomical Association. Scheduled at 7 pm the first Wednesday of each month in room 120 of the Physics building, the topic of each talk relates to the cosmos; why we see the Moon the way we do, how to take night-time photos, how meteors relate to global extinctions, how did early Native Americans see the sky and a host of other topics in which the heavens play a role.

The Laws Observatory will be open following each presentation for viewing of the night-time sky (weather permitting). In addition, the Stankowski Field lights will be switched off to improve the view!.

SCHEDULE Winter/Spring 2012

DATE	Speaker	Title
February 1st	Val Germann	What's Up: the night sky for the Winter/Spring semester
March 7th	Haojin Yan (Physic & Astronomy)	TBA
April 4th	Linda Godwin (Physic & Astronomy)	TBA
May 2nd	Aaron Kaberline	TBA

Past talks

Angela Speck	Planetary Nebulae - beauty in stellar death
Craig Kleuver	A Personal History of NASA Projects
Alan Whittington	Armageddon: Meteorite Impacts
David Arrant	A Tour through the constellations
Sean Baldridge	The Elusive Neutrino
Caitlin Casey	20th Century Telescopes: The Race to the Edge of the Universe
Cori Fletcher	The History of Radio Astronomy
Giovanni Vignale	The Distance of the Moon: A physicist's improvisation on the Earth-Moon system, love, and the laws of physics
Harrison Knoll	Will you explode in space and other movie myths
Arielle Newgard	Islam and the Moon
Michael Barnes	Dog Stars and Divine Hunters: Heavenly Bodies in Early Greek Poetry and Myth.
Mark Smith	Was Galileo Really a Martyr for Scientific Truth?
Angela Speck	Pluto's Demise and Resurrection
Angela Speck	Nuclear processes in the cosmos
Angela Speck	Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Moon, But Were Afraid to Ask
Angela Speck	The rabbit in the moon and other lunar myths
Angela Speck	What is the Zodiac really?
Carsten Ullrich	Anthropic principle and multiverses
Signe Cohen	The Infinite Order: Religion and Astronomy in Ancient India.
Bahram Mashhoon	The fate of the universe
Suklima Guha Niyogi	The Lives of Stars
Melanie Koehler	The Orion Nebula
Craig Kluever	A Personal History of NASA Projects
Adrian Corman	Lives & Deaths of Stars
Ken MacLeod	It Came from Outer Space: Recent controversies regarding the K/T boundary
Larry Brown	Cosmic Reflections on the Cultural Landscape
Alan Whittington	Mars!
Rainer Glaser	Prebiotic synthesis of biological molecules in interstellar space
Mark Volkmann	Is the moon made of cheese? Misconceptions in Astronomy
Todd vanPool	Man and Woman Circle the Hearth: Archaeoastronomy in the American Southwest
Val Germann	Telescopes: How they work and what you can see with them
David Arrant	Saturn: Lord of the Rings
Rita Reed	Night-time Photography
ShunLin Liang	The Sun, Our Star
Dan Caputo	Spaghettification, and other ways the universe is trying to kill you.
Josh Tartar	Dust, Dirt and Debris in the Solar System

speckan@missouri.edu

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