Nerd Nite Toronto: Increasing the Awesome: NASA’s Next Huge Space Telescope; The Science of Shakespeare
Presentation 1: “Increasing the Awesome: NASA’s Next Huge Space Telescope” by Dr. Amber Straughn
Just when you thought that we couldn’t get any better than Hubble, NASA goes and builds a telescope 100 times more powerful. Amber will tell us about building the amazing James Webb Space Telescope here on earth and the science we’ll do with it once it’s in space (2018!). Some highlights: the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang and atmospheres of alien planets.
Amber Straughn is an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. When she’s not gazing longingly at the heavens (or throwing things at her computer in attempts to get code to run), Amber enjoys cooking, yoga, and flying airplanes….though not all three at once.
Presentation 2: “The Science of Shakespeare” by Dan Falk
Sure, William Shakespeare knew how to write plays – but what did he know about science? Shakespeare and Galileo were born in the same year, and we now look back on that time as the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. And yet the words “Shakespeare” and “science” are rarely uttered in the same breath. But journalist Dan Falk says it might be time for a re-think. His book The Science of Shakespeare was published this spring.
Dan Falk is an award-winning science journalist whose writing credits include Smithsonian, New Scientist, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, and many other publications; he’s also been a regular contributor to the program “Ideas” on CBC Radio. Dan is also the author of two previous popular science books, In Search of Time and Universe on a T-Shirt, and in 2011 he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
Trivia!
TRANZAC – 292 Brunswick Avenue
8:00 pm, doors open at 7:30
$5 at the door