MARCH 30, 2014 GENERAL SOCIETY MEETING: NOBEL PRIZE WINNER TO EXPLAIN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
The history of the universe in a nutshell, from the Big Bang until now and on to the future, will be the subject of our next program on Sunday, March 30, 2014, at 1 p.m. at Casa Italiana. We are pleased to announce that our speaker will be Dr. John C. Mather, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and former NASA colleague of AMHS member Joe Novello. Dr. Mather will tell the story of how we got here, how the Universe began with a Big Bang, how it could have produced an Earth where sentient beings can live, and how those beings are discovering their history. Mather was Project Scientist for NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which measured the spectrum (the color) of the heat radiation from the Big Bang, discovered hot and cold spots in that radiation, and hunted for the first objects that formed after the great explosion.
He will explain how Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, how the COBE mission was built, and how the COBE data support the Big Bang theory. He will also show NASA’s plans for the next great telescope in space, the James Webb Space Telescope. It will look even farther back in time than the Hubble Space Telescope, and will peer inside the dusty cocoons where stars and planets are being born today. It is capable of examining Earth-like planets around other stars using the transit technique, and future missions may find signs of life.
Dr. Mather won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite, for which he was project scientist at NASA. In 2007, he was listed among Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Dr. Mather is also the author of The Very First Light, with John Boslough. Dr. Mather will have copies of his book 3 for sale for $10.00. Dr. Mather enjoys traveling in Italy and appreciates Italian culture as well as scientific know-how. We will also be honored to hear from Laura Jones, one of the AMHS/NIAF scholarship recipients in 2013.
Ms. Jones will tell us about her heritage and the importance of the scholarship to furthering her academic studies. A delicious lunch will be served by Piero’s Corner Ristorante Italiano. A flyer with additional details about the meeting, including the menu, is found elsewhere in the Notiziario. Please make your paid reservations by March 23.