This coming Saturday, December 20, Dr. Knop will give a talk titled “Nature’s Telescope, Nature’s Scale: Gravitational Lensing”. Here are the details of the event:

Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008

Time: 10:00 AM Pacific Time (SL Time)

Abstract: The presence of mass creates gravity. If something else is flying by a massive object, its gravity will bend the path of that object. This is why planets orbit the Sun; their path is continually bent around the Sun into a circle. It turns out that even the path of light is bent as it goes near a massive object; this effect is known as gravitational lensing. We can see examples in astronomy where background galaxies are magnified, distoried, and even given multiple images by the gravitational lensing of intervening galaxies. Even very mild gravitational lensing can be used to measure the mass of the intervening galaxies. Finally, gravitational lensing has been used to determine that the dark matter in our galaxy cannot be made up entirely of small massive objects, such as very dim stars or brown dwarfs.

This science talk is intended for the general public. All are welcome. Feel free to ask questions or make comments. In the Galaxy Dome floating above the sim named ‘Spaceport Bravo’ SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Bravo/117/66/278 This talk is part of a series of popular talks called Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy. Dr. Knop was on one of the teams that discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe. Produced in association with the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA).

For more information, see http://mica-vw.org/

Link on the Official SL Events calendar: https://secure-web3.secondlife.com/events/event.php?id=2169864&date=1229760000