Announcement: This Week in The Science Circle - "Unanswered Questions"

Saturday September 28
10AM to 11:30 AM

Monthly panel discussion
With this week as subject “What is the biggest/most significant unanswered question in your field right now?”

Panel participants:

1. Nikolai Mnev, Mathematics
2. William Wall, will answer Astronomy Questions from the Audience
3. Rob Knop, Astronomy; Tension in the Hubble constant

Host scientific debates: Matthew Burr

For more information, Click Here.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32 

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle : "What is Entropy?"

"What is Entropy?"

Saturday, January 5th
10 AM PST
    
By Dr. Rob Knop and Dice   

"What is Entropy? 'Entropy is disorder.' You’ve learned this from popular culture, you’ve learned this in your physical science, chemistry, or biology class. But what does that *mean*? We have an intuitive sense for what “disorder” is, but how do you really define it rigorously for a scientific concept?

"There are two ways to approach it; one is as a term in thermodynamic equations, the other is as a fundamental concept from statistical mechanics (on which thermodynamics is based). In this talk, I will try to convey the true fundamental definition of entropy at a level that anybody can understand. We will roll dice, we will talk about how physical systems can be more 'ordered' or 'disordered' in a rigorous sense, and hopefully we will shed some light on what entropy really is."

For more information, Click Here. 

 https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/61/127/32

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: "Sterile Neutrinos"

“Sterile Neutrinos: a new particle not known to our Standard Model?”
Saturday September 1
10 AM - 11 AM PDT
By Rob Knop

"Over the last year, sterile neutrinos have been in the news. There is some suggestion that evidence for them is present in experimental data, but it’s still very uncertain. If they’re real, it would be very exciting for particle physics, which has the interesting conundrum of a model that is *too good* — in that it’s been decades since there has been any real surprises in particle physics.  A new and unknown particle would mean that we’re finally venturing into deeper explorations of the fundamental nature of high-energy physics; it could potentially have cosmological implications as well.  In this talk, I’ll give a summary of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and describe how amazingly (and, indeed, disappointingly) successful it’s been in predicting and explaining the results of particle physics experiments. I will describe what neutrinos are, and how regular neutrinos differ from sterile neutrinos.  Finally, I’ll talk about the possibilities that we’ve seen sterile neutrinos, and what the implications are."

More information about Knop's presentation at https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/sterile-neutrinos-a-new-particle-not-known-to-our-standard-model/

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: “Stephen Hawking’s Last Paper“

“Stephen Hawking’s Last Paper“
By Rob Knop
Saturday May 5, 10AM - 11AM PDT

“Stephen Hawking’s Last Paper: his and other theoretical cosmologist’s ideas about the multiverse”

For more information: Click Here.  

The Science Circle (61/127/32)

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: “The First Stars”

“The First Stars” by Rob Knop
Saturday, April 7th 10AM - 11AM PDT

The Universe began in a hot and dense state. After ten minutes or so, the elements had formed, and for the next few hundred thousand years the Universe was filled with hot plasma, expanding and cooling. The Universe was opaque; any light emitted would be scattered or absorbed before it could travel far. Then came a transition, when the Universe went from plasma to neutral gas, and at the same time became transparent. After that were the aptly-named “dark ages”, for nothing was emitting light. Some few hundred million years after that, the very first stars in the Universe formed. None of these stars, we believe, is still around today, and observing their effects (either directly or indirectly) is very challenging. However, a number of observations have told us things about the epoch when stars first formed in our Universe, and it remains a major goal of cosmology to learn more about the nature of these stars.

In this talk, I’ll outline the relevant history of the Universe, and tell you what we know and believe about the very first stars.

For more information: Click Here.  

The Science Circle (61/127/32)

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: "Discrepancies" and "CRISPR"

“Discrepancies in the Measured Expansion Rate of the Universe”
Saturday February 24 at 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM SLT
by Rob Knop

The most basic parameter in our description of the expanding Universe is the current expansion rate, given by the Hubble Constant.

A mere two decades ago, the value of that constant was uncertain to a factor of two. Since then, the face of cosmology has changed, and we are now in an era of precision cosmology. We are able to measure the value of the Hubble Constant to within a few percent. The problem is, we now have two measurements– one from nearby objects such as variable stars and low-redshift supernovae, and the other from statistics of fluctuations in the early Universe. The two measurements are different at about the six-percent level, which is greater than the uncertainties on the individual measurements. While astronomers of two decades ago would dream to be in this situation, we find ourselves questioning whether there is something going on in the expanding universe that we haven’t figured out, or whether it is a matter of systematic uncertainties that we haven’t yet identified.

In this talk, I will discuss the history of both the Universe and of our dominant model of the Universe. I will describe how the Hubble Constant went from being extremely uncertain to relatively well known… well enough that we can see a discrepancy in two different measurements. I will describe the two ways we measure the Hubble Constant, and talk about possibilities for resolving the discrepancy in their results.

Read more information here.

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

*  *  *  *  *

"CRISPR"


“New Advances in Genetic Engineering: The Nuts, The Bolts, Frankenstein Monsters?, and Ethics”
Sunday Feb 25 at 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM SL Time
by Stephen L. Gasior 

In the last 150 years we’ve had an amazing advancement in our understanding of the genetic code that programs life. While some technologies for manipulating genes have developed in the last few decades, new programmable systems have been discovered in the past few years. Developed from bacteria, the CRISPR/Cas systems allow a new level of ease for genetic changes in cells. This presentation will describe the origins of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, how it works, applications for its use, and implications for the future.

Read more information here.

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

This Week At The Science Circle: “Black hole Demographics” By Dr. Rob Knop

Saturday January 6th

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PST/SLT

"The term 'black hole' conjures up many fanciful images, some of which are false, and, surprisingly, many of which are true. To astronomers, 'black hole' actually means two different things: first, the theoretical construct predicted by General Relativity (GR), and second, the objects in space that we have observationally confirmed; there is a subtle, at least semantic, difference. For a long time, we’ve known of black holes that are several to about ten times the mass of the Sun, observed as X-Ray sources in our Galaxy. We’ve also known about black holes that are millions to billions times the mass of the Sun, lurking at the cores of galaxies. In the last few years, thanks to gravitational wave observations, we’ve confirmed black holes that are thirty times the mass of the Sun. Are there any in between? Do black holes hundreds or thousands the mass of our Sun exist? If so, where are they hiding? In this talk, I’ll outline our current knowledge of where black holes exist in the Universe, and mention some of the remaining questions we have about these exotic objects."


More information at: https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/rob-knop/

The Science Circle (61/126/32) 

This Week At The Science Circle: "Prospero’s Planetarium"

“Prospero’s Planetarium“, by Rob Knop

 

Saturday, December 23th at 10 AM PST

A functional planetarium is something I wanted to create when I first started with Second Life and saw its building and scripting capabilities. I quickly saw the limits, however. At the time, prims couldn’t be any bigger than 10m, and texture mapping on a sphere broke down at the poles.
After a couple of years, I built the 80-prim monstrosity that I have today — and I still think it probably ought to be bigger. The planetarium shows the bright stars in the sky and all eight planets (with Earth not actually being in the sky).

I will be showing the sorts of things you can do with it, as well as how to use the control panels to set various things about the planetarium. I will also discuss its limits– one of which may be the textures don’t all rez, and lag kills us, with a bunch of avatars in there at once!– and experiments I hope to do in improving it.

More information at https://sciencecircle.org/nextpresentation/

The Science Circle (61/126/32) 

Announcement: This Week at the Science Circle

Saturday the 14th, 10 AM PDT

“Gravitational Waves: The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics”
Presented by Rob Knop Ph. D, USA          

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to leaders of the LIGO collaboration for the discovery of gravitational waves.  This phenomena was predicted a century ago by General Relativity, but it was always known that because they’re typically so small, they would be very hard to detect. 

Indirect evidence for them previously came from the decaying orbits of binary pulsars.  In 2015, the LIGO detectors announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, a signal resulting from the merger of two very distant black holes. 

In this talk, I’ll describe the nature and history of gravitational waves, and the work that the large LIGO collaboration did to earn this Nobel prize.

More information about Knop's presentation, including Abstract and Location, at
https://sciencecircle.org/upcoming-saturday/

The Science Circle (61/126/32) 

Announcement: This Week at the Science Circle: "Eclipses"

“Eclipses” by Rob Knop, Ph.D.

Saturday 9th at 12 PM PDT

Note: To not disturb the eclipse effect: Body/Facial-lights disabled, Please
    
More information about Rob Knop
https://sciencecircle.org/upcoming-saturday/
                     
 ~ Team SC