Science Seminar Winter week 9, Monday.6.March.2006

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Science SeminarWinter week 9, Monday.6.March.2006

• Finishing up Physics of Star Trek
• Next week eval conferences
• sign up today
• Friday self-eval survey
• email peer evals, etc.
• Movie Understanding the Universe

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Next week

• Eval conferences in 2272 Lab II come 5 minutes
  early!
• Bring your
• finished portfolio
• hardcopy self-eval (3 copies on official form)
• hardcopy eval of faculty (official form not
  required 1 copy to Zita or to secretaries in
  2250 Lab II)

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Preparing

• Discuss portfolios evals. Read online
  guidelines (skim together).
• Include all responses to your essays, with
  authors and dates.
• Include all your responses, with original
  essays.
• E-portfolios are fine (optional). Make them
  complete and easy to read, with all links in
  one central, concisely annotated document (e.g. a
  web page).
• Advising and Writing Center have portfolio
  eval workshops

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This Friday email to Zita

• Peer evaluations (a couple of sentences be
  honest and specific not on official forms)
• Paragraph from your best essay (50-100 words),
  with WebX link and reference
• Take Self-Eval survey online by Friday
• No new essays due this week.

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New physics

• Changes since Physics of Star Trek and the movie
  came out
• What is Dark Matter? We know better now
• NOT ordinary matter less than 5 of dark matter
  is protons, neutrons, stars, MACHOS,
• Neutrinos are significant though they have tiny
  mass, there are very many of them (over 1090),
  but still they are less than 30 of dark matter
• Probably WIMPS Weakly Interacting Massive
  Particles not yet discovered...

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Newer physics

• Most of Dark Matter (70?) may be Dark Energy!
• Dark Matter is whatever causes the observed (for
  decades) gravitational dynamics in galaxies
  most of it does not shine
• Dark Energy is whatever causes the observed
  (since about 2001) ACCELERATING expansion of the
  universe
• What is Dark Energy? Vacuum pressure due to
  virtual particle creation? How strong is it?
  Does it change through history?

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Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and the Universe
More questions and some answers next quarter in
Science Seminar Cosmology Quintessence
(A Very Short Introduction) by Lawrence Krauss
(same guy) by Peter Coles
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(No Transcript)