The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is hosting a special summer intern program to evaluate possible landing sites for robotic and human exploration missions. The LPI invites applications from graduate students in geology, planetary science, and related programs. The program is also open to undergraduate students in geology, astronomy, chemistry, and physics with at least 50 semester hours of credit so that they, too, can participate in lunar exploration activities. Continue reading “Lunar Intern Program”
Exploring Your Universe!
Exploring Your Universe (EYU) is a FREE public outreach event held on the UCLA campus every year in the Fall that showcases science from departments across UCLA through hundreds of fun, hands-on activities, demonstrations and experiments for all ages. With wide involvement from students, staff and faculty, EYU has quickly become the main science outreach event at the university. In addition to hands-on demonstrations and experiments, there is a lecture series, a planetarium show, a physics show, and access to rare fossils and UCLA’s world-class meteorite collection – this event truly has something fun for everyone! In 2013, more than 4500 participants flocked to UCLA’s campus to join the all-day science exhibition – come participate at this year’s event in November! For more information regarding this year’s event, scroll down.
The 2014 Exploring Your Universe outreach event will be held on November 16, 2014 on UCLA’s campus.
We recommend visitors arrive early and plan to stay for the duration of the event, as there is plenty to see. We will be giving away 500 free swag bags at the beginning of the event!
Weather permitting, the event will include nighttime activities such as telescope observing in the evening after the rest of the exhibits close. For more detailed information, visit our main EYU page: http://planets.ucla.edu/outreach/exploring-your-universe/
Oct 13 2011: Thinking and Learning in the Geosciences
Speaker:
Prof. Kim Kastens
Dept. Earth and Environment, Columbia University
Abstract:
This colloquium is intended as an introduction to research on thinking
and learning in the Geosciences, pitched for an audience who know a
lot about geosciences and not so much about education research. As
geoscientists, we ask our brains to make sense of an object larger than
the human senses can encompass at one time, older than any time span
with which humans have direct experience, which is not susceptible to
experimental manipulation, whose crust at any given point has
experienced superimposed chemical, physical and biological events,
where flows of matter and energy intertwine at a bewildering level of
complexity. How do we pull this off?
The talk is organized in three concentric rings:
The first and broadest ring situates geoscience education research amid
physics education research, chemistry education research, drawing
on the current National Research Council study on “Discipline-based
Education Research.”
The middle ring draws from the current Synthesis of Research on
Thinking & Learning in the Geosciences project, and explores four key
themes: spatial thinking in geosciences, temporal thinking in
geosciences, systems thinking in geosciences, and teaching and learning
in the field.
The most-tightly focused and final section of the talk will dig into
one of my own research projects: an effort to understand how
geoscientists and geoscience students integrate information from scattered outcrops to form a mental model of a geologic structure.
Reading:
Kastens et al., 2009
Oct 6 2011: Megafloods
Speaker:
Prof. Victor Baker
Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona
Abstract:
Megafloods (terrestrial water flows with discharges exceeding one
million cubic meters per second) are the largest known freshwater
floods, with flows comparable in scale to (though of shorter duration
than) ocean currents. Although there are no modern examples of
megafloods, such flows occurred during major periods of Earth’s
glaciation and during past epochs on Mars. A prominent example is the
paleoflooding caused by late Pleistocene outbursts from Glacial Lake
Missoula, which formed when the Purcell Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice
Sheet extended south from British Columbia to the basin of modern Pend
Oreille Lake in northern Idaho.
Reading:
Baker, 2008
Sept 29 2011: Physical Processes and Evolutionary Consequences
Speaker:
David Jacobs
Dept. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, UCLA
Abstract:
Three vignettes of different scales of flow and landscape influence on
biotic process will be presented.
1) The Late Precambrian Rangeomorph fauna of Mistaken Point Newfoundland
constitute the earliest community of large multicellular organisms.
Through flow modeling we demonstrate that these organisms evolved large
size to access higher velocities in a low flow environment. Access to
velocity overcomes diffusional limits to resource acquisition in a
community dependant on dissolved resources, providing the impetus to
the evolution of large multicellular form.
2) Rapid landscape evolution of the Society Islands resulted from recent
sea-level fall from a mid-Holocene maximum. This fall first generated a
plethora of reef-top atolls in Polynesia. In the last two millennia
such islands have been eliminated preferentially from the south-sides
of the Society Islands as a consequence of wave energy from the
Southern Ocean, yielding dramatic change of reef and lagoon
environments with attendant consequences for marine life and the human
population.
3) Coastal estuaries of California have undergone a maturation process
during the Holocene converting many estuaries from bays to lagoonal
systems dominated by the episodic/seasonal stream flow of our
Mediterranean climate. The impacts of the inter-annual details of
stream flow on dispersal of a seasonal-lagoon specialist fish, the
tidewater goby, are examined using high-resolution genotyping.
Conservation genetic and estuarine restoration issues are touched upon.
Sept 22 2011: At the Edges of the Solar System
Speaker:
Prof. Dave Trilling
Dept. Physics & Astronomy, Northern Arizona University
Abstract:
The small bodies of the Solar System have a story to tell about the
history of our Solar System. Near Earth Objects — asteroids whose
orbits bring them near the Earth’s orbit — are interesting both
because they sample compositions from throughout the Solar System and
because they can, and do, hit the Earth. Kuiper Belt Objects, at the
outer edge of the Solar System, are, in contrast, relatively primordial
and record the formation environment in the early Solar System. In my
talk, I will present our latest results in studies of both Near Earth
Objects and Kuiper Belt Objects, focusing on new results obtained with
data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and
the STEREO mission.
Prediscovery Observations of Disrupting Asteroid P/2010 A2
David Jewitt, S. Stuart and Jing Li (2011) Prediscovery Observations of Disrupting Asteroid P/2010 A2. Astronomical Journal, in press (July issue). Download PDF.
Orbits of Near-Earth Asteroid Triples 2001 SN263 and 1994 CC: Properties, Origin, and Evolution
Fang, Julia; Margot, Jean-Luc; Brozovic, Marina; Nolan, Michael C.; Benner, Lance A. M.; Taylor, Patrick A.
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 141, Issue 5, article id. 154 (2011)
Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Main Belt Comet (596) Scheila
David Jewitt, H. Weaver, M. Mutchler, S. Larson and J. Agarwal (2011). Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Main Belt Comet (596) Scheila. Ap. J. Lett., submitted 2011 Mar 03, revised March 28. Download PDF.
Isotopic and elemental fractionation of solar wind implanted in the Genesis concentrator target characterized and quantified by noble gases
Heber et al. (2011) Isotopic and elemental fractionation of solar wind implanted in the Genesis concentrator target characterized and quantified by noble gases. Article.