Mike Crittenden is Professor Emeritus at Genesee Community College in western New York, where he taught Physics, Astronomy and related courses for four decades. One of his favorite quotes is from Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” He would like to point out, particularly to impressionable young people, that science is not primarily about knowing the difference between a beaker and a flask. At its best, it is about the nature of reality and how we fit into a very large, mysterious Universe.
Introduction to Relativity Certain things which people assume have definite, “true” values such as the distance between two places or the time between two events, in fact do not. Some very fundamental things turn out to depend on one’s frame of reference. We will look at issues such as why nothing can move faster than the speed of light, how time and space are different aspects of the same thing, how gravity distorts space and time and what black holes are. All Welcome. Sirius Rising, Monday, July 17
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Objects the size of atoms or smaller do not behave like the large things we are used to in our everyday lives. They can be in multiple places at the same time or “entangled” with other particles located far away. They can behave unpredictably, contrary to the idea that an effect should have a cause. Some basic properties of an object, such as its location, turn out not to be real – until somebody looks at it. This raises questions which do not presently have settled answers. All Welcome. Sirius Rising, Wednesday, July 19
Extraterrestrial Life. Speculation that other planets could be inhabited goes back many centuries. While we now know there are no moon people or canals on Mars, the Universe is so big it seems likely that intelligent life is out there somewhere. It is quite possible that simple life forms, something like bacteria, live elsewhere in our own solar system. Find out what is known and what is being done to learn more. All Welcome. Sirius Rising: Friday, July 21