Cafe Sci Orlando announcements for 2011-02: "Deep Time and Shallow Thermodynamics"
Chad MILLER
* Topic, "Deep Time and Shallow Thermodynamics: How we know the age
of the solar system"
Topic, "Deep Time and Shallow Thermodynamics: How we know the age of the solar
system"
Hi. This month we will have a fascinating discussion at our Cafe Sci at
7PM on Wednesday 2 February, at Taste, in College Park.
The age of the solar system (and Earth) has had a long history of
contentious debate, most famously in the last decade of the 19th
century between Lord Kelvin and his one-time assistant John Perry.
Today radiometric dating has the precision to detail events during the
formation of the solar system and the geochemical evolution of the
Earth. Dr Britt will review how we know the ages of the Solar System
and the Earth and how that knowledge has changed our understanding of
their formation and evolution.
Dr. Daniel Britt is an Associate Professor of Astronomy and Planetary
Sciences in the Department of Physics at UCF. He was educated at the
University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from
Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US
Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing
before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science
teams of two NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1. He was
the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built
hardware for all the NASA Mars landers. He currently does research on
the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, and Mars
under several NASA grants. Honors include 5 NASA Achievement Awards,
election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and an asteroid named
after him: 4395 DanBritt. He was recently elected President of the
Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
Directions
Taste
717 W. Smith Street
Orlando, United States
32804
Taste is near the corner of Princeton Street (really Smith Street after
the fork) and Edgewater Drive, so about 2 minutes from I-4 to parking.
One can park on the street or in the parking lot behind Taste.
* From Downtown and south, drive north ("east") on I-4 through
downtown. At the exit for Princeton Street, exit and turn
left/west.
* From Altamonte Springs and north, drive south ("west") on I-4
toward downtown Orlando. At the exit for Princeton Street, exit and
turn right/west.
From I-4, drive a few blocks to Edgewater Drive. At the intersection,
you should see a orange building ahead of you, labeled "Taste". Park on
the street or behind Taste.