Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
WINNER OF THE NORDIC:DOX AWARD 2022 Denmark, Greenland / 2022 Our most basic understanding of the origins of life was recently turned upside down when Greenlandic scientist Minik Rosing discovered the first traces of life on Earth in a small fjord near Isua, Greenland. His discovery predated all previous evidence by over 300 million years. Life began in Greenland. At the same time, its melting ice masses are disintegrating day-by-day, and scientists around the world agree that it could drown our entire civilization if it continues. Director Ivalo Frank’s new film is a tribute to a vast,...
Teen Saturdays! is designed for teens interested in Latino culture, history, and community. This spring, high school students are invited to free monthly workshops to explore and learn about the natural world of Latin America and contribute thoughts on making the...
Phillips Auditorium, Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge
Jupiter, the colossal gas giant, captivates with its iconic Great Red Spot and dynamic storms. As a cosmic guardian, its gravity protects inner planets, fostering life on Earth. Beyond its awe-inspiring features, Jupiter hosts a diverse family of moons, each with its own mysteries, adding to the planet's celestial allure.
Embark on an evening with two captivating talks centered around Jupiter, followed by the opportunity to observe the gas giant and other cosmic wonders through high-powered telescopes (weather permitting). This event is sponsored by the Harvard College...
Join curator Jen Thum for an exploration of works in the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine. Thum will share insights about the museums’ medical humanities program for radiologists—on which the exhibition is based—and what can be gleaned through close looking.
At Radcliffe, Mahyar is investigating innovative techniques to integrate situated visualization, augmented reality, and civic technology to design and build a mobile platform that simulates the localized impact of climate change, thereby providing Boston residents with an immersive experience of climate change visualizations and empowering them to contribute comments and ideas on climate change issues.
The platform will benefit the movement towards more equitable resilience by creating new opportunities for the public, especially the underserved communities, to raise their...
Join curator Jen Thum for a tour of the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine. Thum will share insights about the museums’ medical humanities program for radiologists—on which the exhibition is based—the curatorial process, and what can be gleaned through close looking.
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join us for a free art + science night at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology!
This month, we are exploring virtual and augmented reality within the galleries. Meet geologists visualizing seismic events. Try your hand at painting in 3D space using an Oculus headset. Watch how paleontologists digitize research specimens with handheld 3D scanners. Shape landscapes and study water flow in the AR sandbox.
Artisanal cocktails and mocktails by CraftHouse Bartending will be available for purchase. Valid government ID...
Lecturer Jean Dalibard (Professor, Collège de France): "At zero temperature, a Galilean-invariant Bose fluid is anticipated to be completely superfluid. When translational (and thus Galilean) invariance is broken, A.J. Leggett demonstrated in the 1970s that the superfluid fraction must be strictly less than one. Here, we examine both theoretically and experimentally how the presence of an external 1D periodic potential quenches the superfluid fraction of a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate and compare it to Leggett's bound. We show that the anisotropy of sound velocity...
A presentation from 2023–2024 Radcliffe fellow Donna L. Maney
Much of Maney's current work focuses on how sex differences are discovered and reported in biomedical research and how these differences influence public policy. At Radcliffe, she is collaborating with scientists at Harvard University and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health to develop resources to help make biomedical research more sex/gender inclusive.
Lecturer Jean Dalibard (Professor, Collège de France): Solitons are nonlinear wave packets that maintain their shape during free propagation. In quantum gases, bright and dark solitons are observed for attractive and repulsive interactions, exhibiting relatively simple behavior. However, mixtures of gases result in a much more complex physics, with the emergence of dark-bright and magnetic solitons. Here, we examine some non-intuitive phenomena in this context, including the following experimental observation: a magnetic soliton exposed to a constant force...
Lecturer Jean Dalibard (Professor, Collège de France): "Scale invariance, a concept initially introduced in high-energy physics, has gained numerous applications in the physics of quantum fluid. It is applicable to strongly interacting Fermi gases, two-dimensional Bose gases, as well as few-body systems that exhibit the 'Efimov effect.' In the presentation, I will illustrate how scale and conformal invariance emerge in cold atomic gases. I will use various examples ranging from thermodynamics to soliton physics to specific structures with periodic time evolution...
A presentation from 2023–2024 Sally Starling Seaver Professor Fernanda Viégas
During her fellowship, Viégas is excited to explore new modes of human/AI interaction that draw from her roots in data visualization and human-computer interaction. She is interested in the possibility of leveraging advances in AI interpretability (usually aimed at experts) to help drive improvements in lay user agency and control of AI systems. She looks forward to working with colleagues from various departments at Harvard to uncover creative and useful ways of empowering a wide range of...
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online or at Haller Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
In Soil to Foil (Columbia University Press, 2023), Saleem Ali tells the extraordinary story of aluminum. He reveals its pivotal role in the histories of scientific inquiry and technological innovation as well as its importance to sustainability. He highlights scientists and innovators who discovered new uses for this remarkable element, ranging from chemistry and geoscience to engineering and industrial design. Ali argues that aluminum use exemplifies broader lessons about stewardship of nonrenewable resources: its seeming abundance has given rise to wasteful and destructive...
Klarman Hall, Harvard Business School, Kresge Way, Boston
This talk features astonishing aerial images of Earth from Colonel Terry Virts' book and takes of life from the edge of the atmosphere.
Colonel (USAF retired) Terry Virts has spent over seven months in space during his two spaceflights, piloting the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2010 and commanding the International Space Station in 2014/2015. He served in the US Air Force as a fighter pilot, test pilot, NASA astronaut, and is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and Harvard Business School General Management Program.
A presentation from 2023–2024 Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow Jennie C. Stephens.
At Radcliffe, Stephens is completing her book manuscript, provisionally titled Climate Justice University: Another Education Is Possible (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming), which reimagines how higher education could accelerate transformative social innovation toward a more just, healthy, and stable fossil fuel–free future. The book proposes a paradigm shift to leverage the untapped potential of institutions of higher education to advance systemic social change to reduce...
Join curator Laura Muir for a closer look at portraits from Timm Rautert’s photographic series Germans in Uniform (1974), which are included in the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine, on view from September 2 to December 30, 2023. Muir will share insights about the series and encourage participants to reflect on the role uniforms play in constructing our professional identities and the way we relate to others.
Harvard College Observatory Plate Stacks, 47 Concord Ave., Cambridge
During Massachusetts STEM Week, join us for an evening celebrating remarkable women in astronomy from across the galaxy. Enjoy a dynamic lecture on exciting applications of astronomy, explore a captivating exhibition in the Great Refractor, engage in family-friendly STEM activities, and cap off the night with fall refreshments and stargazing.
Remarks from ProfessorLisa Kewley, Director, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Welcome remarks from Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll, highlighting...
Harvard Graduate School of Education, Askwith Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
2023 is on track to be the hottest year on record. What do we do next?
Rising air temperatures are now a fact of life in the world's cities, with major implications for public health and urban design. Join a panel of global experts, innovators, and practitioners to learn more about the impacts of extreme heat on our bodies, our buildings, and our cities–and what individuals and institutions can do to prepare.