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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8th, 7:00pm
CROSSTALK
Your Place in the Cosmos: From planets to stars to galaxies and beyond.

Join Andy Friedman and Ryan Hickox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics for this last crosstalk of the year! Dudley House, Fireside
Room, 7:00 P.M. Light refreshments will be served. Questions?
dho at fas dot harvard dot edu

As astronomers, we are often asked whether we are a Pisces or a Taurus by
default. Although modern astronomers wisely challenge and largely dismiss
astrology, it is interesting that the central premise of astrology, namely
that the external heavens effect us, is actually quite true, although not
in the way that your horoscope would indicate. As we hope to show, it is
not the positions of the planets when you were born that matters most, but
a more complicated and fascinating story of the lives and deaths of stars
and galaxies over the more than ten billion year history of the cosmos.

Starting from the small scales of our planet and extending to the largest
reaches of the known universe, Harvard Astronomy graduate students Andrew
Friedman and Ryan Hickox will attempt to tell the modern cosmological
story of creation and evolution of the universe and connect this to the
prerequisites for the origins of humanity. Although astronomy may seem
distant and disconnected from our daily lives, we hope to argue that it is
remarkably accessible and profoundly relevant for understanding our place
in the cosmos.
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