Understanding Science: January. 20th “Why is the Sky Dark at Night?”
Speaker: Prof. Shashi Kanbur (State University of New York)
January. 20th, 2025, 7pm
Overtone Taproom
75 Dongsibei Dajie, Dongcheng District, Beijing
东城区东四北大街74号
Abstract:
We investigate the seemingly simple question, “Why is the Sky Dark at Night?” Making reasonable assumptions, we are led to the conclusion that the night time sky should be just as bright as the day time sky. Clearly its not - this is Olber's paradox.
Possible resolutions to this paradox lead to strong evidence for a fundamental question in Astrophysics - has the Universe been around forever?
When: June. 23rd, 2024, 7pm
Where: Overtone Taproom
Address: 75 Dongsibei Dajie, Dongcheng District, Beijing (东城区东四北大街74号)
Free entrance, food & drinks at your own expenses.
About the speaker:
Shashi Kanbur studied Mathematics and Astronomy at University College London, graduating with a First Class degree in 1982. From there he obtained a Diploma in Mathematical Statistics (Masters) from Churchill College Cambridge, UK and an MS in Statistics from Stanford University in the USA.
He obtained his PhD in Astrophysics in 1989 from University College London. He has had postdoctoral positions at the University Sternwarte Munich Germany, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (USA), the University of Glasgow and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. Since 2005 he has been a professor of Physics at the State University of New York at Oswego, becoming a full Professor in 2013 and has held the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor since 2023.
He has published over 80 papers in the leading peer reviewed journals in Astrophysics, obtained over a million dollars in research funding and is an internationally known expert in the fields of Stellar Pulsation, Stellar Evolution and the Cosmological distance scale. A number of his undergraduate and graduate students are now in leading faculty and postdoctoral positions. At SUNY Oswego he teaches a wide variety of courses in Physics from Introductory Astronomy for non-science majors to Advanced Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. In 2008 he was awarded the Chretin Award from the American Astronomical Society and in 2021 he was awarded the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Scholarly and Creative Activity.
