2023 Archive

Egyptian-American Sarafina El-Badry Nance is a PhD candidate in Astrophysics at UC Berkeley. She has just published her first book, Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark, the principal subject of this presentation. The book intertwines two content strands: each chapter begins with an intriguing science lesson, and concludes with an account of personal and social obstacles overcome, including racism, sexism, anxiety, self-doubt, and even cancer. This event happens both in-person and online, simultaneously. Sarafina will join the Commonwealth Club's Gerald Harris in conversation, and audience questions are encouraged.

Sarafina El-Badry Nance, also going by Starafina, is an astrophysicist and "Analog Astronaut." Gerald Harris is President of Quantum Planning Group, and Chair of the Commonwealth Club's Technology & Society Member-led Forum.

Wonderfest joins St. Helena's Cameo Cinema to present a Science on Screen special: 32 SOUNDS, from documentary filmmaker Sam Green, is "a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our percetion of the world around us." Rolling Stone's David Fear calls 32 SOUNDS "the greatest documentary you've ever heard." Immediately following the screening, musician Jack Conte and otolaryngologist Dr. Lois Montague will offer additonal insights and answer questions regarding our sonic realm.

Jack Conte is a musician and a Wonderfest Science Ambassador. His creations currently enhance the work of musical groups Pomplamoose, Scary Pockets, and Magaziine. Dr. G. Lois Montague is a head and neck surgeon practicing in Napa since 2017. Her medical training includes residency at the University of Chicago and fellowship training in pediatric otolaryngology at UC San Francisco.

The geometry of the ancient Greeks took place on an ideal, infinite, flat plane. In the millenia since then, mathematicians have opened our minds to the more general and flexible geometries of curved spaces — from the fabric that makes up our clothing, to the spacetime around a black hole. Now, we can develop an 'insider's view' of such geometries. This newfound intuition has intriguing applications, including to recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope! Such understanding allows us to better appreciate Einstein's greatest insight: that gravity is not a force, but rather a consequence of living in a curvy world.

Our speaker, Dr. Steve Trettel, is Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. He is a geometric topologist who loves computer graphics and a good bike ride.

Wonderfest celebrates the 10th annual National Evening of Science on Screen with the new sci-fi comedy-drama LINOLEUM and with the expert commentary of planetary scientist Dr. Pascal Lee. LINOLEUM chronicles the reality-jarring challenges of a midwest dreamer who decides to build his own rocketship. Early reviews give the movie a RottenTomatoes rating of "86% Fresh." Angie Han of the Hollywood Reporter calls LINOLEUM'S final minutes "even more startling in their heart-wrenching effectiveness than in their mind-bending twists." After this special screening, a real rocket scientist, Dr. Pascal Lee, will discuss "how to spend a month on Mars" and will answer questions about the vast beyond.

Dr. Pascal Lee is co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute. He is also a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, an artist & author, and the Principal Investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center.

In 1858, two friends and colleagues, Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin, independently proposed one of the deepest ideas in all of science, evolution by natural selection. However, Wallace's extraordinary — and extraordinarily successful — quest to understand how evolution works is not well known. The story is riveting: a man of modest backbround, driven by curiosity, and persisting through immense hardships in remote lands, Wallace finally discovers the process which drives the evolution of all life on Earth.

Our speaker, Dr. George Beccaloni, is a zoologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian who served as an entomologist at London's Natural History Museum for more than 20 years. He was the historical consultant for a multiple award-winning BBC series about Alfred Wallace, and he is the founding director of the Wallace Correspondence Project.

Upon opening a new deck of cards, have you ever attempted a so-called perfect shuffle? A perfect shuffle splits a deck into two equal stacks, and then perfectly interlaces the cards from the two stacks. (Eight successive perfect shuffles puts the cards back into their original, fresh-out-of-the-pack order!) Only experienced card handlers can reliably perform even a single perfect shuffle, and yet the mathematics behind perfect shuffles has a rich history, including everything from mathematical card tricks to sophisticated research.

Our speaker is Dr. Cornelia Van Cott, Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. As a geometic toplogist, she studies knots, surfaces, and the interplay between 3- and 4-dimensional objects.

We have a new supersensitive eye in the cosmic sky. Parked nearly one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is ~100 times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST observes at "low" frequencies, from the red to the mid-infrared parts of the spectrum, offering new insights into a vast array of objects and processes including solar system formation, star birth and death, galaxy evolution, and, perhaps, the origins of life.

Our speaker, UC Berkeley's Professor Alex Filippenko, will present early findings from JWST. Alex was voted UC Berkeley's "best professor" nine times; he is the only astronomer to contribute to both research teams whose work earned the 2011 Physics Nobel Prize; and among his many awards is Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.

Experiences at different times in life may alter aspects of personality: appetite for risk, tolerance for delayed gratification, interest in music, etc. Our brains seem to develop particularly rapidly during a staggered sequence of "sensitive periods" that stretch late into the second or third decade of life. Such periods of high neuroplasticity are ripe for specific types of learning; they are also susceptible to negative experiences that can lead to mental illness. Understanding sensitive-period brain plasticity will help us to improve education and personality development.

Our speaker, Dr. Linda Wilbrecht, is Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at UC Berkeley. Dr. Wilbrecht conducts research through the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and she directs The Wilbrecht Lab.

Physics has always sought to deepen our understanding of reality, particularly our concept of matter. Today, city-size machines crash together particles — at nearly the speed of light — that are a trillion times smaller than a grain of sand. The resulting insights have both theoretical and practical value: a more profound (and weird) concept of existence, and new technologies such as diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy. Wonderfest joins BookShop West Portal — online — to present physicist Dr. Suzie Sheehy in discussion of her new book The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World. [Image: The ATLAS detector of CERN's Large Hadron Collider]

Dr. Suzie Sheehy is a physicist, science communicator, and academic who divides her time between research groups at England's University of Oxford and Australia's University of Melbourne.

After nearly three years of increased "sheltering at home," you may have noticed more six-legged critters sharing your shelter. Scientists, too, have been taking a closer look at these more numerous (and more brazen?) insect invaders. What surprising findings have the researchers uncovered?

Our speaker is Dr. Vernard Lewis, Cooperative Extension Specialist (emeritus) at UC Berkeley. Dr. Lewis is a global authority on termites, and his research has explored other home-invading creepy-crawlers: ants, bedbugs, and cockroaches.

The stars beckon. Alas, interstellar distances are fantastically challenging. (A lightbeam needs 1/7th of a second to go around the world, but over 4 years to reach our Sun's nearest-neighbor star, Proxima Centauri.) Determined explorers at Breakthrough Starshot are developing miniature robot space probes — to be accelerated by laser light from Earth — whose cameras can reach Proxima Centauri in just 20 years! Among the wonders to be explored are Proxima's three known planets, including Proxima b, which orbits in this red dwarf star's "habitable zone."

Our speaker, Dr. S. Pete Worden, is Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives (of which Breakthrough StarShot is one program). Formerly, Dr. Worden was Director of NASA Ames Research Center.

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