For everyone who was dissapointed by our cancelled symposium, Dr. John B. Charles (one of the original symposium speakers) has agreed to come to Toronto to give a special Star Talk!

In the late 1990s, A Canadian research team played an important role in proving something we all should know about neutrinos: they are almost — but not quite — massless. When scientists first realized that nuclear reactions must be the power source for the Sun and stars, it seemed there would be no way to observe those reactions directly. Wolfgang Pauli invented the neutrino in 1930 to help explain radioactivity, and neutrinos were first measured in the 1950s.

Join us as particle physicist and Nobel Laureate Arthur McDonald takes us on a journey through the underground Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNOLAB) to measure the smallest and most elusive particles in the universe. Followed by a panel discussion also featuring York physicists Sampa Bhadra and Scott Menary, moderated by Matt McGrath, BBC journalist and York Science Communicator in Residence. About the speaker and panelists

The combined power of infrared observatories both in space and from the ground has allowed us to observe extraordinarily distant galaxies. Some of the most distant are observed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was merely 2% of its current age. Dr. Muzzin will talk about what what observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope have shown us about these exotic young galaxies. He will also introduce the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's $9 billion dollar IR-optimized successor to Hubble.

For millennia, people (including our First Nations) have used the sky as a clock, calendar, and compass. Astronomy thus became deeply rooted in their spirituality, mythology, and culture.

The Department of Physics invites faculty, students and the public to its 44th annual celebration of physics. The Welsh Lectures in Physics have been held annually since 1975 in honour of H.L. Welsh, a distinguished former faculty member in the Physics Department. They are the major public event in the life of the Department of Physics and are intended to celebrate discoveries in physics and their wider impact. They are intended to be broadly accessible to an audience drawn from across the university, other academic institutions and the interested public.

The life of a single galaxy is an extremely complicated affair and understanding the origin and evolution of the roughly 100 billion galaxies in our universe is even more so. But through heroic telescope surveys and state-of-the-art computer simulations, cosmologists have been progressing on this problem at an ever increasing rate. In this talk, George Stein will discuss current efforts to create realistic galaxies using some of the largest supercomputers on the planet, and will show what these simulations mean for future observations.

Quench your thirst for astronomy! On Friday, May 4, at The Great Hall! It'll be another fun evening of pints, astronomy news, mind-expanding talks, games, prizes, and Dunlap merchandise for sale! Plus, following all the talks, there will be plenty of time for you to have all your cosmic questions answered by astronomers from the Dunlap Institute and the University of Toronto. We'll see you there!

Just like the Earth, the Moon is about 4.5 billion years old. It has been and continues to be constantly bombarded by meteorites. Some suggest that this rate of bombardment has remained constant in the past couple of billion years. The Moon’s surface without any substantial atmosphere or tectonic activity serves as a time capsule, helping us detangle Earth’s history. The only way to see if the bombardment rate has changed is to have an age for every single crater, an extremely difficult task using traditional crater dating methods.

This weekend tour introduces families to the wonders of astronomy through an indoor planetarium experience, craft activities for younger visitors and stargazing. Visitors will spend time in both the main building and observatory visiting the 1.88m (74") telescope, learning its history and getting to see celestial objects firsthand (weather permitting).