Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2018 Annual Meeting of the APS Mid-Atlantic Section
Volume 63, Number 20
Friday–Sunday, November 9–11, 2018; College Park, Maryland
Session A01: Plenary I: Nobel Laureates |
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Chair: Wendell T. Hill, III, University of Maryland, College Park Room: Edward St. John 0202 |
Friday, November 9, 2018 6:30PM - 7:15PM |
A01.00001: Time, Einstein, and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe Invited Speaker: William Daniel Phillips At the beginning of the 20th century Einstein changed the way we think about Time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of Time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the universe. Atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made, are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations. Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultracold atoms, achieve accuracies of about one second in 300 million years, and are getting better all the time, while a new generation of atomic clocks is leading us to re-define what we mean by time. This will be a lively, multimedia presentation, including exciting experimental demonstrations and down-to-earth explanations about some of today's hottest (and coolest) science. |
Friday, November 9, 2018 7:15PM - 8:00PM |
A01.00002: From the Big Bang to Signs of Alien Life, with the James Webb and Future Telescopes Invited Speaker: John C Mather Planned for launch in 2021 on an Ariane 5 from French Guiana, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will observe at wavelengths from 0.6 to 28 µm with a full suite of imagers, spectrometers, and coronagraphs. JWST will extend the discoveries of the Hubble and Spitzer observatories in all areas from cosmology, galaxies, stars, and exoplanets to our own Solar System. With a 6.5 m primary mirror it has a collecting area 7 times that of Hubble and 50 times that of Spitzer. Inventions were required ranging from deployment and in-flight focusing of its segmented telescope, to greatly improved infrared detectors, to a 6 Kelvin refrigerator for one of the instruments. I will outline the planned observing program and the major scientific challenges being addressed. What were the first objects that formed in the expanding universe? How do the galaxies grow? How are black holes made, ranging from stellar mass to supermassive, over a billion solar masses, and what is their effect on the neighborhood? How are stars and planetary system formed? What governs the evolution of planetary systems, with the possibility of life? How did the Earth become so special? But the most important discoveries will be those we have not even imagined today. I will also describe the new telescopes being built on the ground and proposed for space, ranging from far infrared to X-rays. And now for something completely different, I am developing a radical idea to observe exoplanets with ground-based telescopes and extreme adaptive optics, using an orbiting starshade. Since it does not require a space telescope, it could reveal an Earth twin with signs of life within the next 15 years. Not easy, but not impossible! |
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