Ice Age: Collision Course

The State Theatre & Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
presents
Science at The State

A free student science education program pairing LLNL scientists with popular movies.

Space telescopes: Observing the X-ray Universe

LLNL Scientist(s):
Emilie Dunham

Teacher: Tom Shefler

Teacher’s School: Granada High School

Abstract:
Have you ever wondered where the material that makes up planets, asteroids, and even our bodies comes from? When stars reach the end of their lives, they create many of the elements around us, including the carbon that makes up life on Earth and the oxygen that we breathe. These elements drift through space as gas and dust and eventually help form new stars, new planets, and even you and me. Scientitsts have actually found tiny pieces of this “stardust” her on Earth, preserved inside meteorites that fall from space. This talk will tell the story of stardust and how LLNL uses powerful tools to learn about the stars that made us.

Film Summary:
When Scrat the squirrel accidentally launches himself into space, he sets off a chain reaction that sends an asteroid hurtling toward Earth. Now, the entire herd must leave home to explore new lands and save itself from Scrat’s cosmic blunder.

Doors at 10:30 a.m.

Talk 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Film at 12:15 p.m.
Admission is FREE

Bios:

Emilie Dunham received her Ph. D. from Arizona State University. After completing her Ph.D., Dunham ventured on a month-long meteorite hunting expedition in Antarctica as part of Case Western’s Antarctic Search for Meteorites team. She returned to the U.S. as a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently, she is a Lawrence Fellow at LLNL where her research focuses on constraining the formation of the solar system by studying very old meteoritic inclusions with mass-spectrometry techniques.

Tom Shefler received a B. S. degree in Physics and Applied Mathematics from Western Michigan University and an M.A. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from UC Berkeley. While at Berkeley, he researched, analyzed and catalogued Hubble Space Telescope images of galaxies, observational research in the detection and study involved in the detection and study of extrasolar planets, and discovered Supernova 1998DT while working with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope team. He currently teaches Physics and Engineering at Granada High School.