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Nao Suzuki Lecture

Nao Suzuki gave his talk as a virtual tour through space and time. The presentation was designed to expose listeners to a wide range of topics in astronomy and informally engage them in questions relating to objects and events in the Universe. For his introduction of the history of the Universe he talked about upcoming meteor showers and their significance. Using the audience’s help he began to construct a “Cosmic Calendar” of the top 10 biggest events in the Universe, which he then compared to Carl Sagan’s “Universe in One Year” calendar. Carl Sagan’s calendar begins with the Big Bang on Jan 1rst 0:00:00 and ends with the appearance of the modern human on Dec 31rst 23:59:36.9. The first star, galaxy formation, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and other events are placed in their corresponding date and time on the calendar. Nao walked through each event taking guesses from the audience for what the top 10 events were and when they occurred.

The next stop on Nao’s tour was our solar system. He began to explore relative distances and sizes of the objects in our solar system. This was another chance for him to challenge the audience’s preconceptions. He then went through each major object in our solar system (star, planet, satellite, comet, etc.) asking questions and explaining their basic physical properties. He briefly talked about previous space missions to them such as Deep Impact in 1992.

Nao transitioned from our local neighborhood of planets to our nearest stars in the Milky Way galaxy. At this point magnitudes of distances and sizes as well as the number of stars become truly hard to grasp. To help aid with understanding these magnitudes he scaled them down to relative distances we see everyday. One example of this was the question “If the size of the Sun were a quarter coin - then the distance to the nearest star would be… 700m, 7km, SFO, Santa Cruz, or San Diego?” Similarly stars were scaled down to grains of sand and galaxies were scaled down to the size of coins for more thought provoking questions. The immense timescale of traveling these distances was also discussed as he moved on to galaxies.

Computer simulations of colliding galaxies and dying stars were one of the final stops on the tour as Nao looked at the larger structures of the universe. The talk began to focus on the origins of the elements (nucleosynthesis, stellar fusion, and supernovae) and the basics of cosmology including energy density, spatial geometry, and spectra. He also made a few precision cosmology calculations such as the total number of atoms and photons in the universe. He then included future plans for satellites and telescopes such as SNAP, ELT, and the Kepler satellite.

The final section focused on our civilization and the possibilities of other life in the Universe. The Drake equation, which estimates the number of intelligence life forms in our galaxy, was explored along with the lifetimes and limits of civilizations in general. These limits include natural disasters, self-destruction, and large asteroid impacts. A few of the biggest questions to ask an extraterrestrial (if given the opportunity) were mentioned along with the work of the SETI group in searching for extraterrestrial life. In closure, Nao talked about his dreams for the human race, which involve eventually finding and meeting intelligent life forms within 5000 years.