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“Reading the Tea Leaves of Eternity: Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and the Beginning of Time; New Messengers (Gravitational Waves and Neutrinos) and What They Can Tell Us.

  • 27 Aug 2022
  • 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Bill and Adele Jonas Center 1800 Ignacio Boulevard Building 19 Novato, CA 94949

Four distinguished speakers from Fermilab and The University of Chicago will give a 90-minute talk followed by 30 minutes of Q&A.


Eventbrite Registration:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reading-tea-leaves-of-eternity-dark-energy-dark-matter-beginning-of-time-tickets-400389093557


Following the talk, there will be a star party (star gazing through telescopes) on Mt Tamalpais at the Rock Springs Parking lot. You must be a member of the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers to attend the star party. New members must submit their online application 10 working days prior to attending a members-only star party to allow for processing and mailing of a parking permit. (Note: Ten working days ahead of August 27 is August 15.)


Brief Bios:


Dan Hooper, PhD

Dan Hooper received his PhD in physics in 2003 from the University of Wisconsin. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford between 2003 and 2005, and the David Schramm Fellow at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) from 2005 until 2007. He is currently a Senior Scientist at Fermilab and an Associate Professor in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the University of Chicago. He is also a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago. Since 2017, he has been the head of Fermilab's Theoretical Astrophysics Group.

Hooper has authored or co-authored over 200 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The most highly cited of these papers includes a 2005 review of dark matter (co-authored by Gianfranco Bertone and Joseph Silk), as well as a series of papers written between 2009 and 2014 on the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope's Galactic Center excess and its possible connection to annihilating dark matter. In 2017 he was elected to become a fellow of the American Physical Society, "For pursuing the identity of dark matter by combining careful analysis of observational data with theoretical ideas from both particle physics and astrophysics."


Gordan Krnjaic, PhD

Gordan Krnjaic is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, where he is a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.

His research focuses on theoretical particle physics and cosmology beyond the standard model. Recently he has developed new experiments and search strategies to discover dark matter and hidden forces in non-traditional settings including electron beam dump fixed-target experiments and neutrino factories. He also builds models of new physics at the electroweak-scale motivated both by naturalness and upcoming searches at the Large Hadron Collider.


Joshua Frieman, PhD

Josh Frieman is the Particle Physics Division (PPD) Head and a senior staff member in the Theoretical Astrophysics group at Fermilab and the Fermilab Cosmic Physics Center. He is also Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, where he is a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.

Frieman earned a B.Sc. degree from Stanford (1981) and a PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago (1985). After a postdoc in the SLAC Theory Group, he joined the scientific staff at Fermilab in 1988. He served as Head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group from 1994 to 1999. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics. He has served on the Executive Committee of the APS Divison of Astrophysics, on the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) of HEPAP, on the Astro 2010 Decadal Survey Committee, and on the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC).


Angela Olinto, PhD

Angela V. Olinto is Dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences and the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. She previously served as Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from 2003 to 2006 and again from 2012 to 2017.

Olinto is best known for her contributions to the study of the structure of neutron stars, primordial inflationary theory, cosmic magnetic fields, the nature of the dark matter, and the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays, gamma-rays, and neutrinos. She is the Principal Investigator of the POEMMA (Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics) space mission and the EUSO (Extreme Universe Space Observatory) on a super pressure balloon (SPB) mission, and a member of the Pierre Auger Observatory, all designed to discover the origin of the highest energy cosmic particles, their sources, and their interactions.

Olinto received a B.S. in Physics from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1981, and Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was a trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics, and has served on many advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She received the Chaire d’Excellence Award of the French Agence Nationale de Recherche in 2006, the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2011, and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in 2015 at the University of Chicago.


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