KICP Life Long Learning Series
Gravitational lensing is one of the most important predictions from General Relativity. It is the phenomenon of light deflecting when photons pass through a gravitational potential. Astronomers apply gravitational lensing in astrophysics and cosmology to study a wide range of problems. I will present the history of gravitational lensing, from Einstein's proposal to recent applications, and the future of gravitational lensing in the big data era.

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KICP Lecture
QM2017 Public Lecture in collaboration with C2ST

For the first second of time, long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, our universe was a hot primordial soup of "elementary" particles like quarks. Encoded in this formless, shapeless quark soup were the imprints of events from an even earlier epoch---the very beginning of the universe. Over the last 12 billion years, the primordial soup has cooled and condensed into the rich cosmic structure we see around us in the universe today. We can learn the nature of the primordial soup by studying relics from the early universe, and we can uncover the ingredients of the soup by cooking up a little bit of it in the laboratory.

Edward W. Kolb
Edward W. Kolb (known to most as Rocky ) is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the College and Dean of the Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago, as well as a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. In 1983 he was a founding head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group and in 2004 the founding Director of the Particle Astrophysics Center at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

Kolb is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was the recipient of the 2003 Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers for notable contributions to the teaching of physics, the 1993 Quantrell Prize for teaching excellence at the University of Chicago, and the 2009 Excellence in Teaching Award from the Graham School of the University of Chicago. His book for the general public, Blind Watchers of the Sky, received the 1996 Emme Award of the American Aeronautical Society.

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.

Kolb's research was recognized by the 2010 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, awarded by the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute for Physics. He holds an honorary degree, Doctor Honoris Causa, from the University of Lyon, France, and was the recipient of the J. Hans D. Jensen Prize of the University of Heidelberg.

He has traveled the world, if not yet the Universe, giving scientific and public lectures. Rocky has been a Harlow Shapley Visiting Lecturer with the American Astronomical Society since 1984. In recent years he has been selected by the American Physical Society and the International Conference on High-Energy Physics to present public lectures in conjunction with international physics meetings. Rocky presented a special public lecture in Salonika Greece as part of the cultural celebration of that city, and he was selected to address the president of Pakistan as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the country. He has been the Oppenheimer lecturer in Los Alamos, and in Athens (Ohio) and Troy (New York) he presented the Graselli Lecture and the Resnick Lecture. He has also presented public lectures at the Royal Society of London, as well as Vienna, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Valencia, Victoria, Montreal, Bonn, Heidelberg, Munich, Karlsruhe, Rome, Toronto, Copenhagen, Turin, Madrid, Bejing, Uppsala, Hamilton, and Vancouver.

Rocky has appeared in several television productions, most recently interviewing Stephen Hawking for the Discovery Channel. He can also be seen in the IMAX film The Cosmic Voyage.

Dr. Kolb's lecture is a geared toward the public, and is a part of Quark Matter 2017, the XXVI international conference on ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. The conference brings together theoretical and experimental physicists from around the world to discuss new developments in high energy heavy ion physics.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
In early December, I helped launch a balloon named ANITA. ANITA flies 25 miles above Antarctica and carries with it an array of radio antennas, searching for rare and very-energetic particles from outside the galaxy interacting in the ice.

KICP Talk
Join The Triple Helix for a discussion with Professor Daniel Holz, who worked on last year's gravitational waves discovery! Learn about what led to the discovery and what further progress has been made in the past year.

We will have copies of the newest edition of our Scientia journal available.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Antarctica is unique among all the places on our planet. Not only is it protected by international treaty and preserved for peaceful scientific research, but its extreme location makes it possible to conduct experiments there which couldn't be carried out anywhere else. I'll talk about the unique science that we can do there: observing the earliest moments of the history of the universe, searching for barely detectable particles generated in massive explosions millions of miles from Earth, and providing unique data for climate science. I'll also talk about what it's like to spend a year living at the South Pole, where temperatures regularly reach -100 degrees Fahrenheit and the sky is filled with the southern lights throughout the six month long night.

Talk
Dr. Hafidi will present on her history and career in order to open up discussion about the experiences of women and underrepresented minorities in physics and science. An informal reception and discussion will follow.

Dr. Kawtar Hafidi is the Director of the Physics Division at Argonne National Laboratory. She is an experimental nuclear physicist who has received numerous awards recognizing her effective advocacy for increased diversity. Previously, she has led Argonne's Women in Science and Technology program and was chair of the American Physical Society's Committee on the Status of Women in Physics.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
We look upward, and the cosmos greets us with scintillating constellations of stars and gossamer webs of galaxies. Yet the mysterious thread that ties them all together cannot be seen - the dark matter! In the talk, I will explain how the first evidence for dark matter emerged 50 years ago, and I will describe the ongoing efforts to detect the dark matter in laboratories across the world today.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Over the past few millennia, our understanding of time and the techniques we use to measure it have evolved dramatically. A case in point: the best clocks in existence are so precise that they will neither lose nor gain 1 second over the course of ~15 billion years (longer than the current age of the universe), and efforts are underway to push that precision even higher. But what do we gain by building ever-more-accurate clocks? In this talk I will highlight some of the history of how our ability to measure time has evolved, how our understanding of time changed with the advent of relativity, and how current efforts to measure time to higher and higher precision are shedding light on questions ranging from geophysics to cosmology.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
In the past 20 years, thousands of new planets have been found outside of the solar system. These "exoplanets" have revolutionized the way we think of our own home planet. I will talk about how astronomers find exoplanets and what they can tell us about planets and life throughout the universe.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
"Science and Star Trek" focuses on the ways that media, such as television's Star Trek, can bridge the gap between scientists and the public by helping to align the goals of Science and Society.

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KICP Event
Watch a screening of 'Hidden Figures' and join an expert panel of UChicago female physicists and astrophysicists who will explore the contributions of women of color in science and the current and historical challenges they experience. Panelists are Professor Young Kee Kim, Kavli Institute graduate student Andrea Bryant, and KICP Fellow Camille Avestruz.

'Hidden Figures'
As the United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Based on the unbelievably true life stories of three of these women, known as "human computers", we follow these women as they quickly rose the ranks of NASA alongside many of history's greatest minds specifically tasked with calculating the momentous launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and guaranteeing his safe return. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in U.S. history as true American heroes.

KICP Talk
"From Grad School to Government": UC graduate Nicole Fields will discuss her career as a health physicist and how she got there since gaining her PhD.

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KICP Talk
Join us for a Yuri's Night edition of Chicago Astronomy on Tap hosted by Univ. of Chicago at The Map Room! Yuri's Night celebrates the launch anniversary of the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin. Come hear about the history of human spaceflight, research into the ripples of the fabric of spacetime, and updates on the upcoming March For Science. Compete in astronomy trivia to win awesome astronomy prizes, enjoy the 25+ beers on tap at The Map Room, and enjoy an evening with some awesome alcohol-inclined astronomers!

This month's talk
100 Years in the Making: The Detection of Gravitational Waves - Zoheyr Doctor

Almost two years ago, a ripple in the fabric of space-time, originating from two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, was detected by an international team of scientists. Hear the story of how scientists made this groundbreaking discovery, and about the mind-boggling phenomena physicists and astronomers hope to understand in the coming years.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Marco Raveri, Postdoc, KICP Assoc fellow
Marco moved to Chicago in 2016 from Trieste, Italy. He enjoys thinking about gravity and cosmic acceleration, which are two of the biggest mysteries in science today. But in his free time, he likes rock climbing at the climbing wall in Millenium Park.

I will describe the history of cosmic acceleration, one of the biggest outstanding mysteries in astronomy today. We will discuss: What is it? What observation have been made up till now that provide evidence for it? How can future observations reveal its nature?

KICP Talk
Searching for the highest energy particles in the universe requires an extremely large detector, because they are very rare and elusive. Our hunt for these particles takes us to the bottom of the world - Antarctica - where we can use the entire 14 million square kilometer Antarctic ice sheet as a detector. The particles we are looking for are ultra high energy neutrinos that come from astrophysical sources which are the most powerful accelerators in the universe. At the cafe we will discuss why we search for these high energy neutrinos, how we do it, what we know now, and what we hope to learn in the coming years.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
In this talk, I will explain what gravitational waves are, how we detect them, and what they tell us about the universe. Starting with the theory of gravity, I will discuss how Einstein revolutionized our understanding of gravity as "curved spacetime." Einstein's description of gravity leads to fascinating physical phenomena, including black holes and gravitational waves. I will explain what causes gravitational waves, and how we were able to detect them for the first time last year with the LIGO detectors. Finally, I will discuss what we hope to learn from these gravitational waves, and what surprising facts about the universe we might discover along the way.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Cosmic rays are very highly energetic particles coming from space. Though their existence has been known for longer than a century their origin and how they are accelerated to such extreme energies is still not understood. This talk will focus on the history of their study and how modern experiments like HAWC and HELIX plan to solve this 100-year-old mystery.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Over the past few millennia, our understanding of time and the techniques we use to measure it have evolved dramatically. A case in point: the best clocks in existence are so precise that they will neither lose nor gain 1 second over the course of ~15 billion years (longer than the current age of the universe), and efforts are underway to push that precision even higher. But what do we gain by building ever-more-accurate clocks? In this talk I will highlight some of the history of how our ability to measure time has evolved, how our understanding of time changed with the advent of relativity, and how current efforts to measure time to higher and higher precision are shedding light on questions ranging from geophysics to cosmology.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Echolocation is the ability of animals to sense their environment by emitting sounds and hearing the echoes, but not all animals echolocate in the same way. I will compare and contrast the techniques of echolocation in different animals: bats, whales, birds... even humans.

KICP Workshop
Cosmin Deaconu, Postdoctoral Researcher - Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago
Eric Oberla, Postdoctoral Researcher - Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago
Sam Passaglia, Graduate Student - Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago

The Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago focuses on understanding the nature of the universe. Scientists at the University of Chicago use many different methods to learn about our universe. Come take a look at our cosmic ray detector, which can sense particles from outer space. Learn how we discover planets around other suns and about cosmology and particle astrophysics research performed by KICP in Antarctica, and the expansion of the universe. Feel free to ask us any questions you might have about the universe.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Pregnancy in mammals is different than other animals. The many changes a mother undergoes is controlled by the hormone progesterone. Within pregnancy tissues, progesterone turns on thousands of genes. Every gene has an on/off switch and a dial that affects how strongly the gene is on (like a light dimmer). Perhaps within pregnancy tissues, fast changes to these "dimmers" in the past contributed to their response to progesterone and the evolution of mammalian pregnancy.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
The ocean absorbs approximately 30% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which leads to seawater becoming more acidic. This process, called ocean acidification, has a negative effect on several marine species including corals and shellfish. My research focuses on understanding how oysters will respond to increasing ocean acidification levels.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
We are awash in the afterglow light of the Big Bang, a period of extreme temperatures and densities in the early moments of the universe. This light, known today as the Cosmic Microwave Background, can be studied to learn about the early universe, its contents, and how it has evolved over time. To best observe this afterglow light, scientists travel to the Earth’s geographic south pole in central Antarctica where several telescopes have been constructed for just this purpose. In this talk, I’ll describe in more detail what the Cosmic Microwave Background is, how scientists use it to learn about the universe, and what it’s like to travel, work, and live at the South Pole.

KICP Life Long Learning Series
One of the big discoveries in modern astronomy is that Dark Matter is everywhere. Nearly everything about why the Universe is the way that it is requires Dark Matter as a key component. However, one of the deeply frustrating things for an experimental astroparticle physicist like myself is that we know very little about its properties because we cannot measure it in a lab. I'll discuss what my colleagues and I have been doing to try to shed some light on our understanding of Dark Matter. This revolves around underground detectors that we are building in Italy to try to actually detect the Dark Matter that is all around us. I'll also discuss some other related efforts at CERN in Geneva, nickel mines in Canada, and more. Lastly, I also hope to share some about what it's like to actually work at these places because sometimes the work environments are almost as interesting as the science itself!

KICP Life Long Learning Series
Cosmic rays are very highly energetic particles coming from space. Though their existence has been known for longer than a century their origin and how they are accelerated to such extreme energies is still not understood. This talk will focus on the history of their study and how modern experiments like HAWC and HELIX plan to solve this 100-year-old mystery.

KICP Talk
​Speaker: Michael S. Turner
Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics; Enrico Fermi Institute; University of Chicago

We can trace the evolution of our Universe back 13.8 Billion years, to within a microsecond of a big bang beginning. At that early time, all that we see today existed as a hot, slightly lumpy quark soup. We are trying to answer even bigger questions today, e.g., the nature of the dark matter and dark energy that steer the evolution of the Universe, and extend our understanding even further back, even addressing what happened before the big bang.

KICP Yerkes Institute
Instructors: Huanqing Chen, Zoheyr Doctor, Clarke Esmerian, Emily Gilbert, Jason Henning, Gourav Khullar, Randy Landsberg, James Lasker, Phil Mansfield, Nora Shipp.

Over the course of a week, local Chicago high school students will learn about how the physics of energy conservation makes various everyday toys possible, and how using a structured engineering design process can allow them to understand the inner workings of things around them. In the three main labs, students will learn about pressure potential energy by reverse engineer super soakers and testing manufacturer claims about bottle rockets, they will learn about elastic potential energy by building and racing wind up cars, and they will learn about gravitational potential energy as they compete to build room-sized Rube Goldberg machines. The Institute will also contain various bite-sized activities, ranging from observing nebulae with the Yerkes 24-inch telescope, to learning defense techniques against deceptive infographics, to investigating the mysterious physics of the household microwave.

KICP Event
Compare the movie's hero astronaut, Scorch Supernova, to critters walking our planet. See yourself as a South Pole explorer in our selfie booth. Pre-movie fun provided by UChicago's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and Boy Scout Troop 599.

Flyer

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KICP Summer School
This 1-week "hands-on" summer school is designed to provide the participants with working knowledge of the detectors and instrumentation used to detect the tiny temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Early graduate students interested in pursuing a PhD in experimental CMB research methods are particularly encouraged to apply. A feature of the school is hands-on activities to teach students the basics of CMB instrumentation. We expect to have room for approximately 15 students.

Topics will include: superconducting detectors, e.g., transition-edge-sensor (TES) bolometers, kinetic-inductance-detectors (KIDs); detector characterization (responsivity, beams, bands, time constants, polarization calibration); coherent techniques for characterizing mm-wave components; SQUIDs and detector readout; antenna design; and Fourier transform spectroscopy.

The School will be held at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago in the William Eckhardt Research Center (ERC).

Website
KICP Event
Join us for a round table discussion with Berlin-based Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno and UChicago professors Angela Olinto, Daniel Holz, and Heinrich Jaeger, moderated by Zachary Cahill, Curator for the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at UChicago.

Berlin-based Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno will be in residence at the University of Chicago to meet with scientists from the Department of Astrophysics & Astronomy, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Center for Soft Matter. Saraceno's recent research and new experiments are inspired by the cosmological dimension, both by sub-atomic environments as well as celestial bodies. He will be interacting with astrophysicists, cosmologists, and soft matter physicists to investigate their research and inquiry methods, with a particular focus on cosmic dust. As a result of this residency, all participants will gain a greater understanding of experimenting with structural forms and the physical properties embedded in the natural world, along with first-hand insight into Saraceno's visionary translation of these concepts into sculptural form.

Tomas Saraceno's oeuvre can be seen as an ongoing research, informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, astrophysics and engineering; his floating sculptures, community projects and interactive installations propose and explore new, sustainable ways of inhabiting and sensing the environment. In 2015, Saraceno achieved the world record for the first and longest certified fully-solar manned flight. During the past decade, he has initiated collaborations with renowned scientific institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute, the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, and the Natural History Museum London. He is the first person to scan, reconstruct and reimagine spiders' weaved spatial habitats, and possesses the only three-dimensional spider web collection to existence. Saraceno lectures in institutions worldwide, and his work has been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Saraceno lives and works in and beyond the planet Earth.

Panelist bios:

Angela Olinto, the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Enrico Fermi Institute; and the College; Chair Astronomy & Astrophysics

Daniel Holz, Associate Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics; Enrico Fermi Institute

Heinrich Jaeger, William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Professor of Physics, James Franck Institute; Fellow, Institute for Molecular Engineering

KICP Event

• Daniel Holz, UChicago, "Update on Gravitational-Wave Astronomy"
  We will discuss some of the interesting findings from LIGO/Virgo's second observational run, which concluded at the end of August.
• Joshua Freeman, UChicago, "Update from DES and DECam"
  We will discuss some interesting findings from DECam, related to LIGO/Virgo's second observational run.

The colloquium will be followed by discussion and comments by: Holz, Frieman, Hubble Fellow Dan Scolnic, University Professor Wendy Freedman, and students and postdocs involved in the new findings.

Livestream of LIGO press conference will be shown in ERC Lobby (Video Wall) and PRC 201, 9:00-11:00 a.m.

KICP Event
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Gravitational Waves & Transient Astronomy but were Too Afraid to Ask...

Featuring:

• Maya Fishbach
• Zoheyr Doctor
• Daniel Scolnic
• Phil Landry
• Reed Essick

KICP Talk
Organizer: Andrew Neil

Dr. Smith has a broad range of expertise in the physical sciences with a particular focus on the development of instrumentation and hardware required to detect high-energy radiation (X-rays, gamma rays), and its interaction with matter. Dr. Smith's extensive background in detector technology, that includes work in modeling and developing detector packages (using both solid state and scintillating crystal detectors), characterizing light detectors (photomultiplier tubes and avalanche photodiodes), and the commissioning of fast (nanosecond scale) signal processing and communication electronics. During his postdoctoral work at Argonne National Laboratory, he was part of an engineering team that designed, installed, and commissioned a FPGA based trigger module for use in ground based gamma-ray telescopes, significantly improving their noise rejection. Additionally, through his participation in multiple astronomical facility construction projects, Dr. Smith has gained a background in the mechanics of large optical support structures, missile positioners, and coating/degradation processes in mirror surfaces.

Event
Children, families, students and teachers are all invited to attend this annual holiday lecture and open house at the Kresten Physics Teaching Center at the University of Chicago. Graduate students, undergraduate students and professors are going to perform breathtaking physics demonstrations with a bang. Participants could also take part in many hands-on activities relating to various topics in physics.

KICP Yerkes Institute
Organizers: Zhuowen Zhang, Philip Mansfield, Zoheyr Doctor, Rich Kron, Brian Nord, Andrea Bryant, Dimitrios Tanoglidis.

This year in YWI we will explore how everyday electronics work. Through the analogy of waves on a string, students will explore the principles behind wireless transmission. Demos of the Faraday experiment will illustrate the conversion between electricity and magnetism, building an intuition for circuit elements. These mini-activities will lead students into building three functional electronic devices used in everyday life -- the microphone, speaker and AM radio.

Using the devices they built, students will modify components of their device such as the capacitance on the radio, or the strength of magnet used in the speaker in order to alter the radio channel or the loudness of the speaker. These experiments are designed to engage the students' interest in the physics of everyday electronics.