A little too far away for myself, but there are a couple of public lectures of particular interest coming up in Belfast.
"What happens when a scientist plays at archaeology", public lecture to be delivered by Prof. Mike Baillie. See here for details.
When Wed, 27 Jul 2011, 19:00 – 21:00
Where Whitla Hall, Queen's University Belfast, BT7 1NN
Professor Baillie obtained his first degree in Physics before moving into Palaeoecology.
He is a leading expert in tree-ring dating, high-resolution chronology in recent millennia, environmental effects of explosive volcanism, frequency and environmental effects of extraterrestrial impacts in recent millennia, and mythology as a source of information on extreme events.
Here's what Terry Moseley says on the Armagh Observatory web site:
The alternative title is "How precise tree-ring dating raises issues concerning the frequency of extraterrestrial impacts."
Mike is Professor Emeritus of Palaeoecology at Queen's, and a world expert on tree-ring dating, and is well known to many astronomers in Ireland and further afield for his interesting and forthright views on the rate of relatively recent comet/asteroid impacts on Earth as revealed by accurate tree-ring dating of climatic events, and indeed with possible links to stories in Irish and other mythologies. He has given fascinating and thought-provoking lectures to the IAA, among others, on this topic. He has written three books on the topic "Exodus to Arthur", "New Light on the Black Death: the cosmic connection", and "The Celtic Gods: comets in Irish mythology", the latter with IAA member Dr Patrick McCafferty. See: http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/gap/Staff/ ... keBaillie/.
"Killer Asteroids" by Dr Robert Jedicke. See here for details.
When 3 August 2011 7pm
Where Larmor Lecture Theatre
Dr Robert Jedicke has had four professional careers: Canadian football player, particle physicist, software engineer and astronomer. At the University of Hawaii he leads the PanSTARRS team searching for asteroids and comets. In three years, PanSTARRS will discover more solar system objects than have been found in the past two centuries.
The current surveys for 1km near-Earth asteroids have almost completed their goal of finding 90% of the population, but the telescopes used are too small to discover more than a fraction of the dangerous sub-km objects. A renowned asteroid hunter, Jedicke is leading the search for dangerous asteroids with the new PanSTARRS1 telescope in Hawaii, the largest and most sensitive telescope built for this task.
