LBNL Summer Lectures

There are three lectures left of the LBNL summer lecture series for those of you that are close enough to pop up to the Hill for them. Theya re in Building 50's auditorium. The next two are of interest to me, obviously.

July 11

Bill Collins: The Future of the Earth’s Climate: Frontiers in Forecasting

Leading climate modeler Bill Collins joined the Earth Sciences Division in April to form a new department dedicated to atmospheric and climate science. Collins is also teaching at UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science. At Berkeley Lab, he heads an initiative to create a new kind of climate model that integrates cutting-edge climate science. He’ll discuss how observations show that the Earth is warming at a rate unprecedented in recent history, and that human-induced changes in atmospheric chemistry are probably the main culprits. Climate models suggest that patterns of global warming will amplify over the 21st century, impacting plants, animals, and society. Improvements in the scientific foundation of climate forecasts will require better observations and understanding of the carbon and hydrological cycles.

July 18

Terry Hazen: Bioremediation: The Hope and the Hype for Environmental Cleanup

Terry Hazen of the Earth Sciences Division is a leading authority on bioremediation, which uses biological processes to clean up toxic and non-toxic compounds. He will discuss when it’s best to resort to engineered bioremediation of contaminated sites, and when it’s best to rely on natural attenuation. Recent advances in systems biology, ecogenomics, and synthetic biology have greatly broadened the potential applications for bioremediation in cleaning up many types of contamination. At the same time, however, scientists’ knowledge of biogeochemical processes has advanced to such an extent that they can better gauge how quickly and completely contaminants can be degraded without human intervention.

July 25

Michael Barnett: The ATLAS Experiment: Mapping the Secrets of the Universe

Michael Barnett of the Physics Division will discuss the ATLAS Experiment at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics’ (CERN) Large Hadron Collider. The collider will explore the aftermath of collisions at the highest energy ever produced in the lab, and will recreate the conditions of the universe a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. The ATLAS detector is half the size of the Notre Dame Cathedral and required 2000 physicists and engineers from 35 countries for its construction. Its goals are to examine mini-black holes, identify dark matter, understand antimatter, search for extra dimensions of space, and learn about the fundamental forces that have shaped the universe since the beginning of time and will determine its fate.

These are at noon.