Event

Marine scientist Dr. Stephen Palumbi answers our questions about whales (and other marine life) in this online encore presentation of Wonderfest's in-person February-6th event in St. Helena. With an easy-to-procure library card number, begin by watching 2021's The Loneliest Whale. [It's streaming via the FREE Kanopy service, associated with many public libraries.] The Loneliest Whale (88% "Fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes) is a cinematic quest to find "the 52-hertz whale," apparently condemned to a life of solitude by the unique frequency of its call to other whales. Time magazine's Sephanie Zacharek says that "this lonely seafaring fellow ... has become a metaphor for our need to connect and communicate with others." In contrast, Professor Palumbi has a wondefully rich life in science communication — with his students at Stanford and with the public in general. Even if you can't watch The Loneliest Whale beforehand, join Wonderfest to explore the marine world via Zoom with Prof. Palumbi.

Dr. Stephen Palumbi is Professor of Marine Biology at Stanford University. He does research at Hopkins Marine Station, and he is Senior Fellow at Woods Institute for the Environment. Steve is the author of 2014's The Extreme Life of the Sea with his son, Anthony Palumbi.

Many of us are captivated by the behavior of wild animals: a pride of lions fighting off a clan of hyenas, a honeybee dancing to communicate the location of food, the crazy acrobatic courtship displays of male lance-tailed manakins. What is it like to be a biologist who studies the behavior of such creatures? What are the implications for the study of human behavior? Using examples drawn from her work with rodents known as tuco-tucos, tojos, and tokoros (pictured above), Dr. Eileen Lacey will describe the types of questions, concerns, and sometimes astounding solutions that field biologists employ in their quest to understand why animals do what they do.

Dr. Eileen Lacey is Professor and Co-Chair in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. She also leads the Vertebrate Social Behavior and Population Biology Laboratory at Cal's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

In 2017, astronomers detected an elongated object swinging past Earth on its way out of the solar system. The size, shape, and motion of Oumuamua (roughly "scout" in Hawaiian) suggested to a few scientists that an interstellar spaceship had paid a visit. Perhaps the most outspoken of these scientists is Harvard astronomer Dr. Avi Loeb. Of Professor Loeb's new book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll says, "Avi Loeb's sumptuously written book will provoke you to think about the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe in new and stimulating ways." Via this live online interview with Prof. Loeb, Wonderfest joins the Commonwealth Club in facilitating the stimulation!

Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb is Professor of Science and Chair of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University. He is the author of four books and over 700 scientific papers. Dr. Loeb is also director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Modern physics provides a stunning view of the universe on scales both vast and miniscule, and, of course, on the scale of our everyday lives. In his new book, This Way to the Universe: A Theoretical Physicist's Journey to the Edge of Reality, Dr. Michael Dine describes humanity's — and his own — attempts to face profound mysteries like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and (even) why the universe consists of something rather than nothing! Prof. Dine describes the danger of falling in love with math as he shows how our arcane-but-essential approaches to understanding the stuff of reality — like String Theory — may be experimentally testable.

Dr. Michael Dine is Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, UC Santa Cruz. During this online Commonwealth Club interview, audience Q&A will take place in the virtual chat bar.

Wonderfest joins St. Helena's Cameo Cinema to present a special screening of 2021's The Loneliest Whale documentary followed by Q&A with Stanford marine scientist Dr. Stephen Palumbi. The Loneliest Whale (88% "Fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes) is a cinematic quest to find "the 52-hertz whale," apparently condemned to a life of solitude by the unique frequency of its call to other whales. Time magazine's Stephanie Zacharek says that "this lonely seafaring fellow ... has become a metaphor for our own need to connect and communicate with others." In contrast, Professor Palumbi has had a wonderfully rich life in science communication — with his students at Stanford and with the public in general. His post-screening presentation (with audience Q&A) will shine light on the "secret life of whales," in general.

Dr. Stephen Palumbi is Professor of Marine Sciences at Stanford University. He does research at Hopkins Marine Station, and he is Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Steve is the author of 2014's The Extreme Life of the Sea with his son, Anthony Palumbi.

Dr. Daniel Kammen is Professor of Energy and founding director of the Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) at UC Berkeley. He has recently returned from the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) where he served as USAID's Senior Advisor for Energy, Climate, and Innovation.

With increasing frequency, AI algorithms are making high-impact decisions: When should a self-driving car slam on the brakes? Can an MRI scan reliably detect a tumor? Will facial recognition software identify you as a Most Wanted fugitive? AI algorithms need to be aware of their confidence level — to "know what they don't know" — in order to be reliable and safe. Fortunately, time-tested ideas in statistics are providing solutions. How are old and fundamental mathematical concepts blending with recent tech breakthroughs to create safe, uncertainty-aware AI?

Our presenter, Dr. Stephen Bates, is a postdoctoral researcher in two departments at UC Berkeley: Statistics and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. He is also a distinguished alumnus of Wonderfest's Science Envoy Program.

Conventional wisdom suggests that knowledge and imagination — science and fantasy — are deeply different from one another. However, new insights into childhood development challenge this distinction. In fact, exactly the same abilities that allow children to learn about the world also allow them to imagine alternative worlds. Research in computational theories of cognitive development is allowing us to grasp the relation between imagination and causal cognition.

Our speaker is Dr. Caren Walker, Assitant Professor of Psychology and Director of the Early Learning & Cognition Laboratory at UC San Diego. Dr. Walker is also a distinguished alumna of Wonderfest's Science Envoy Program.

Humans have grown food for over 10,000 years. As Earth's climate changes and the global population seeks fresh and healthy nutrition, advances in robotics gradually transform agriculture: robots assist in precise irrigation, drones fine-tune fertilizer delivery, and mobile robots optimize plant breeding. Robots even help combine research and art. In 1995, over 100,000 people remotely collaborated to tend a living garden; and in 2020, researchers trained a robot to sustain a diverse polyculture garden. Alas, robot help in the kitchen is significantly harder to achieve than on the farm.

Our presenter, Dr. Ken Goldberg, is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at UC Berkeley. He is an award-wining roboticist who directs Cal's Automation Laboratory, and he is a filmaker and artist who works to bridge "the two cultures" of science and art.

Globular star clusters are among the oldest astronomical objects in the Universe. Accordingly, they can provide valuable information about the early evolution of the galaxies they inhabit. This presentation, focussing on the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, will show what globular clusters reveal about their host galaxies' chemical composition. We will also explore the mysteries that still surround globular cluster formation, and possibilities for future observations.

Our speaker, Dr. Charli Sakari, is Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University. She earned her PhD as a Vanier Scholar at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. This Zoom event is part of the 2021 Mount Tam Astronomy Program.

Although humanity now knows the genetic sequences of many animals (including ourselves), the functions of these sequences -- the blueprints of life, so to speak -- often remain a mystery. In recent years, we have harnessed the power of synthetic biology and theoretical physics to glean new understanding of these mysterious genetic sequences. This presentation will highlight some new ways of thinking that have led to breakthroughs in decoding the blueprints of life.

Our speaker, Dr. Jonahan Liu, is a computational biologist and data scientist at Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub. Upon receiving his PhD, Dr. Liu gave the Physics Department graduate commencement address at UC Berkeley.

Ground-based telescopes have come a long way in recent decades. Today they can take advantage of adaptive optics systems that reduce the effect of atmospheric image distortion, and, also, of fast compact computers that allow small telescopes to reach the capability of large telescopes. The result is a lively community of citizen astronomers who (among other things) can detect exoplanets and help study the size, shape, and trajectory of near-Earth asteroids.

Our speaker, Dr. Franck Marchis, is Senior Planetary Astronomer at the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center. He is also Chief Scientific Officer at Unistellar, maker of citizen scientist telescopes. This Zoom event is part of the 2021 Mount Tam Astronomy Program.

In his latest book, Fear of a Black Universe: An Outsider's Guide to the Future of Physics, Brown University's Dr. Stephon Alexander explores some of nature's deepest questions. He uses the principles of invariance, quantization, and emergence to address ideas at the outer limits of physics, including even what happened before the big bang and what makes consciousness possible! Dr. Alexander argues that further progress in physics will likely be enhanced by embracing the excluded, listening to the formerly unheard, and being fearless in the face of possible error.

Dr. Stephon Alexander is Professor of Physics at Brown University. Access to this online conversation with the Commonwealth Club's George Hammond will be admission-free for registrants who apply the discount code WONDERFEST.

Aging greatly increases our susceptibility to a myriad of diseases, ranging from neurodegeneration to cancer. Given the very different tissues and manifestations of these diseases, aging researchers suspect there are basic aging processes that drive all or most of them. One such process is cellular senescence. Researchers, including those at Marin's Buck Center, are now beginning to understand the senescence response in some detail and, importantly, beginning to develop new drugs to deal with senescent cells.

Our presenter, Dr. Judith Campisi, is Professor of Biogerontology at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. She is also co-editor-in-chief of Aging Journal, and founder of the pharmaceutical company Unity Biotechnology.

"I decided at an early age that we inhabit a very curious world." In fact, the discoveries of astronomer Vera Rubin have shown that we inhabit a very curious universe. Her study of galaxies helped us to see that mysterious dark matter constitutes 80% of the material universe. In comparison, the ordinary matter of flesh, earth, and stars seems insignificant! Wonderfest joins the Commonwealth Club in presenting science writer Ashley Jean Yeager in discussion of her new book: Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond: The Life of Astronomer Vera Rubin.

Ashley Jean Yeager earned a master's degree in science writing at MIT. After writing and editing at the Smithsonian Institution, Keck Observatory, and Duke University, she is now Associate News Editor for Science News magazine. Ashley will be in conversation with the Commonwealth Club's George Hammond, author of Conversations with Socrates.

Throughout history, the Universe has had a way of turning our grandest thoughts upside down. Now, we see that the cosmos is dark: dominated by dark matter and dark energy. With the Dark Energy Survey imaging 1/8th of the night sky — and mapping more than 100 million galaxies — we can get a clearer understanding of the vast Universe we call home.

Wonderfest joins the Mt Tam Astronomy Program in presenting Dr. Alexandra Amon, postdoctoral researcher and Kavli Fellow at Stanford's Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology.

Mathematicians, artists, engineers, and designers use three broad concepts to develop their creations: geometry, symmetry, and topology. We will clarify and explore these three subjects to see how they are applied in the understanding of mathematical knots and in the analysis and design of abstract geometric sculptures: math and art embracing one another, knotted together beautifully!

Our speaker, Carlo Séquin, is Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Known for his accomplishments in computer design and architecture, Dr. Séquin is also expert in computer graphics and abstract geometric art.

[Image: NASA artist's rendering]

In 2021, three nations are sending missions to the Red Planet — including NASA's Perseverance rover with the first Mars helicopter, Ingenuity. Ancient Mars was much like Earth, with rivers, lakes, and possibly the stirrings of life; but how has it changed? Using beautiful color images from the latest space probes, astronomer Andrew Fraknoi will reveal what we know, and what we hope to discover, about the alien world next door.

Andrew Fraknoi is Emeritus Chair of the Foothill College Astronomy Department. Professor Franknoi was the first recipient of Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization, and we're delighted that he will inaugurate Wonderfest's post-COVID return to in-person science gatherings.

OR, register for the companion LIVE STREAM ZOOM program: HERE (hosted by our partner: Castro Valley Science)

[Image: NASA artist's impression]

In 2017, astronomers detected an elongated object swinging past Earth on its way out of the solar system. The size, shape, and motion of Oumuamua (roughly “scout” in Hawaiian) inspired a few excited researchers to suggest the visitation of an interstellar “spaceship." This presentation will explore the physical nature of Oumuamua and a vast fleet of its extrasolar cohorts.

Our presenter, Dr. Douglas Lin, is Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. He is also the founding director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at Peking University. This online event is produced by Wonderfest for the Mt Tam Astronomy Program.

Rather than just blow stuff up, lasers can be used to cool gases down to temperatures near absolute zero. Stanford physicist Benjamin Lev uses lasers and these ultracold gases to create a quantum version of the classic Newton's Cradle toy. Playing with this quantum toy has led to insights into the emergence of what is called "quantum chaos." Controlling such chaos may lead to new quantum devices for solving challenging practical problems.

Dr. Ben Lev is Associate Professor in Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Among his other honors, Prof. Lev has earned both a Presidential Early Career Award and an NSF Career Award for his research into the realm of the very small (and/or very cold): quantum microscopy, quantum gases, and quantum neural networks, in particular.