Two talks take place this week at Bradbury Science Museum; lecture series is part of museum's fifth Astronomy Days

Contact: Steve Sandoval, steves@lanl.gov, (505) 665-9206 (02-071)

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 17, 2002 -- A series of five evening lectures begin Tuesday at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Bradbury Science Museum with a discussion on gamma-ray bursts by Laboratory scientist Ed Fenimore.

The lectures are free and open to the public and part of the museum's fifth annual Astronomy Days at the downtown museum, said Pat Berger of the museum, part of Los Alamos' Community Relations Office.

The scheduled talks over the next two weeks will help introduce Earthwatch students visiting the Laboratory to the field of astrophysics. The eight high-school-age students, accepted into the Earthwatch Student Challenge Awards Program, participate in a variety of activities over a two-week period coordinated and designed by Los Alamos staff members.

Fenimore's talk begins at 7 p.m. Fenimore, of Los Alamos' Space and Remote Sensing Sciences Group, will provide the latest information about gamma-ray bursts, said Berger. The mystery of these sudden bursts of high energy gamma-rays has increased almost every year since their discovery by Los Alamos researchers in 1973. They originate, literally, from the other side of the universe, flooding the entire universe with gamma-rays; and during their brief outbursts, produce almost as much energy per second as the entire universe.

Fenimore, who won the Laboratory's Distinguished Performance Award on four occasions, has been involved in the study of these bursts of energy for almost three decades, conducting theoretical studies and building instruments placed in satellite orbits and on space shuttles.

The evening talk also will provide an opportunity to discuss the nature of scientific research and how understanding the process for that research is crucial to planning one's career and training as a scientist. Historical examples will be used to illuminate how science progresses and how one ought to prepare for a career in science.

The second scheduled talk in the series is at 7 p.m. Wednesday when Los Alamos' Todd Haines will speak on "From the smallest to the largest: Understanding why the sun shines." Haines, of Los Alamos' Neutron Science and Technology Group and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, will talk about research into how the sun produces its energy.

Haines will talk about the "solar-neutrino problem," that involves many aspects of particle physics, nuclear physics and astrophysics, yet is a prime example of how exploratory scientific research leads to new, unexpected results. "Little scientific background is necessary to follow this intriguing tale," said Berger.

Haines' graduate work at Irvine involved studying the neutrino and searching for proton decay under the supervision of Professor Frederick Reines, who won the Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of the neutrino. Today, Haines continues the quest to understand the neutrino and its properties, most recently working with many colleagues on a large neutrino detector known as Super-Kamiokande in Japan.

Other scheduled talks are as follows:

• "Cosmology: What we've learned about the universe and its beginning," 7 p.m., Monday, June 24. Galen Gisler of Los Alamos' Thermonuclear Applications Group is the speaker.
• "Asteroids," 7 p.m., Wednesday, June 26. Jack Hills of the Laboratory's Theoretical Astrophysics Group is the speaker.
• "Probing Intergalactic Space with Modern Radio Telescopes," 7 p.m., Thursday, June 27. Phil Kronberg of Los Alamos' Institute for Geoplanetary Physics is the speaker.

The Bradbury Science Museum is located at 15th Street and Central Avenue in Los Alamos. Museum hours, apart from the special events listed above, are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

For more information, contact Berger at 665-0896.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.

Los Alamos enhances global security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, developing technical solutions to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and national security concerns.

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