R. Jack and Forest Lynn Biard Lectureship in Cosmology and Astrophysics

CCAPP is proud to present the Annual R. Jack and Forest Lynn Biard Cosmology and Astrophysics Lecture, the annual series of public lectures which is supported by a generous gift from Captain Forrest R. Biard, U.S. Navy, Ret., a 1953 MS recipient from the Ohio State University. The Biard Lecture will form the cornerstone of CCAPP's outreach effort, bringing forefront research in cosmology and astrophysics to OSU's undergraduates, the University community, and the general public.

Captain Forrest R. Biard

Forrest R. Biard was born in Bonham, Texas, and moved to Dallas when he was eleven years old. After graduating from North Dallas High School in 1930, he entered the U.S. naval Academy, graduating 11th in the class of 1933-34.

He first served on the USS New Orleans, and in 1939 was sent to Tokyo to learn the language and culture of the Japanese people. This education and experience proved invaluable as he became one of twelve men who later deciphered the Japenese code book. The breaking of this code book allowed the U.S. and its Allies to win the Battle of Midway, and eventually to win World War II.

After World War II ended, Captain Biard attended post-graduate school in Annapolis, Maryland, where he studied nuclear engineering, nuclear physics, and radiation hazards. From there he went on to pursue a master's degree in physics at The Ohio State University (OSU).

While working on his master's program at OSU, Captain Biard was again called to serve his country as the operations officer for the first hydrogen bomb test. He later returned to OSU and received his master's degree in 1953.

Captain Biard eventually went back to Japan as captain of the Luzon, a battleship repair vessel. After retiring from the Navy, Captain Biard began teaching physics at Long Beach City College where he taught until his retirement in the 1980s. While at Long Beach City College, he originated an innovative course that used a variety of music tools, including the human voice, to illustrate the physics aspects of acoustics. That class was later filmed and shown on public television.

Captain Biard's hobbies include reading and discussing physics, including quantum theory, the big bang theory, and astrophysics. He also enjoys reading and translating Japanese history books, particularly those about World War II. Always a sociable person, he enjoys meeting new people and making new friends.

A Department of Physics Distinguished Alumnus, Captain Biard donated funds to create the R. Jack and Forest Lynn Biard Lectureship in Cosmology and Astrophysics, which is named in honor of his parents.

BLAST! The Movie - Welcome to Astrophysics Indiana Jones style!

Tuesday December 1, 2009
5:00pm
Physics Research Building Atrium
Q&A with Paul and Mark Devlin following the movie
View the Anyvite Event Invitation

Filmmaker Paul Devlin follows the story of his brother, Mark Devlin PhD, as he leads a tenacious team of scientists hoping to figure out how all the galaxies formed by launching a revolutionary new telescope under a NASA high-altitude balloon.
Their adventure takes them from Arctic Sweden to Inuit polar bear country in Canada, where catastrophic failure forces the team to try all over again on the desolate ice in Antarctica. No less than the understanding of the evolution and origins of our Universe is at stake on this exciting escapade that seeks to answer humankind's most basic question, How did we get here?
BLAST! is about the crazy life of scientists. Their professional obsessions, personal and family sacrifices, and philosophical and religious questioning all give emotional resonance to a spectacular and suspenseful story of space exploration.

More information about BLAST! and movie trailer: blastthemovie.com

PICTURES FROM THE EVENT! http://tinyurl.com/ycop336

MARK DEVLIN, PhD

Cosmologist, University of Pennsylvania and BLAST Principal Investigator

The Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, at the University of Pennsylvania, Mark Devlin is an experimental cosmologist. He designs and constructs the devices that collect the data that help us understand our universe. Rather than working out theories on a chalkboard, he's more likely to be found crawling inside the frame of a car-sized telescope, soldering gun in hand, or standing on the windswept ice of Antarctica preparing to send that high-tech appliance to the very edge of space on a NASA balloon.
Mark's recent projects include BLAST (Balloon-Borne, Large-Aperture, Submillimeter Telescope) a sophisticated scanning device that detects submillimeter light from distance star-forming dust clouds while suspended beneath a NASA high-altitude balloon at the top of the atmosphere.
More information about Mark Devlin is available at The University of Pennsylvania and http://blastthemovie.com/about.html

PAUL DEVLIN

Director, Producer, Editor

A five-time Emmy winner for his work on NBC's Olympics and CBS's Tour de France, Paul Devlin's films include Power Trip, which screened in 60 countries, theatrically across the United States and on PBS's Independent Lens, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and has won 10 film festival awards, including top prizes at Berlin, Hot Docs in Toronto, and Florida.
More information about Paul Devlin can be found here: http://blastthemovie.com/about.html

Mysteries of the Universe

Watch the talk Online!

October 29, 2008

Ninety-five percent of the universe is missing! Astronomical observations suggest that most of the mass of the universe is in a mysterious form called dark matter and most of the energy in the universe is in an even more mysterious form called dark energy. We have no understanding of the nature of the stuff that makes up our universe. In a nontechnical discussion, I will outline the evidence for dark matter and dark energy, and discuss why cosmologists feel that unlocking the secrets of dark matter and dark energy will illuminate the nature of space and time and connect the quantum with the cosmos.

Rocky Kolb

Edward W. Kolb (known to most as Rocky) is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the College and Chair of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, as well as a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. The field of Rocky's research is the application of elementary-particle physics to the very early Universe. In addition to over 200 scientific papers, he is a co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle physics and cosmology.

Exploding Stars and the Accelerating Cosmos: A Blunder Undone

Watch the talk Online!

October 17, 2007

• Recent observations of exploding stars located halfway across the Universe reveal an astonishing fact: the expansion of the Universe is speeding up! This suggests that empty space itself is the source of a mysterious "dark energy" that drives cosmic acceleration. Curiously, when Albert Einstein first thought about the role of gravity acting throughout the Universe in 1917, he imagined a repulsive "cosmological constant" that would balance out the attractive effects of gravitation. After the expansion of our Universe was clearly established by astronomers, Einstein regarded this cosmological term as a mistake. Modern observations show that we need something that acts very much like Einstein's discarded cosmological constant to account for an accelerating universe. And we need a lot of it-- dark energy accounts for 70% of the universe today. This talk will show how astronomers use supernova explosions to trace cosmic history and will sketch some of the plans to learn more about the nature of the dark energy through observations.

Professor Robert P. Kirshner

• Robert P. Kirshner is Harvard College Professor of Astronomy and Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University. The author of over 200 scientific publications, Kirshner has also written for a broader public in National Geographic, Sky & Telescope, Natural History, and Scientific American magazines and is a frequent public speaker on science. His award-winning popular-level book The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos is now in paperback from Princeton University Press and has been translated into 4 languages.
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  At Harvard, Kirshner teaches a large undergraduate course for students who are not concentrating in the sciences called The Energetic Universe. Kirshner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He has just finished a term as President of the American Astronomical Society. In September 2007, Kirshner and his colleagues of the High-Z Supernova Team (including many of his former students and postdocs) shared the Gruber Prize in Cosmology.