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

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)

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

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.

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...

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?

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