A Grand Tour of the Universe: Moons, Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Asteroids, Black Holes and (Almost) Everything Else
David Helfand has been a Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University for 47 years, where he served as chair of the Department for two decades. He is also the former President of the American Astronomical Society and of Quest University Canada, and currently serves as Chair of the American Institute of Physics. Professor Helfand has received the Columbia Presidential Teaching Award and the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates. He is the author of A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age and, recently The Universal Timekeepers: Reconstructing History Atom by Atom.
Overview
Let’s do a thought experiment to show the grandeur and magnitude of the universe. If the sun were the size of an orange in a typical New York market, the Earth would be a grain of sand 15 feet away, circling it once per year at the speed of 3 inches per day. The nearest star would be a similar orange — in Minneapolis, and it has orbiting grains of sand, too. There are 300 billion other stars whizzing around in our galaxy we call the Milky Way, which is just one of half a trillion other galaxies of stars in the observable Universe. In many ways, it’s remarkable how much we know about all these stars and galaxies by observing from our “little grain of sand.” It’s remarkable how much we have learned about all of these stars and galaxies. Yet, in many ways it’s amazing how much we still do NOT know about the vast universe in which we all live. Join Columbia Astronomer David Helfand for this “grand tour” of the cosmos!