Guest Speaker Topic for our next meeting,
February 8, 2012, 7:30 PM
at Proctor Terrace School (map)

2012: The End of Days?

If you want to keep yourself up to date, and decide if you should cash in your 401k's and travel around the world or invest in the world's largest plastic pink flamingo park to while away your last days until the end of the world, be sure and put the next SCAS meeting on your calendar! Robert Davis is going to tell us just what we might expect....or not.

Those of you who are docents at the Robert Ferguson Observatory know Rob and his very entertaining talks on whatever has been on his mind. Very often "what is out there" regarding the latest in space exploration or investigations into some very interesting aspects of science and technology. Or alien lifeforms that have it in for humans....like vicious rogue deer and the like! But his talks are always very well researched, interesting, and above all entertaining. Here is his synopsis giving us an idea of what we will here from Robert, in his words:

"The end of the world has been declared and this time it is etched in stone – of the Mayan Calendar. But just how will it end? Will it will be blown to bits by antimatter or sucked down a black hole? Perhaps Earth will be transformed into Strange Matter or the elusive Higgs boson will send a ripple back in time to trigger our demise. Maybe aliens from the planet Nibiru will invade our planet and bring about Armageddon.

"It has been claimed that the Large Hadron Collider is capable of bringing any one of these predictions to fruition. Of course the LHC was already supposed to have created the dreaded Earth swallowing black hole back in 2009 when it was powered up for the first time. The kicker is the LHC has yet to run at full power but it is scheduled to do so in 2012.

"In my presentation 'The End of Days' we examine each of these threats in turn and discover if we should be losing any sleep over the LHC or not. I will present the evidence and let you decide for yourself."

Robert is a software engineer for his daytime job, and an amateur astronomer and science enthusiast "24/7" according to him. He has been a very active docent with the RFO for 10 years, and was elected Vice President of the VMOA (Valley of the Moon Observatory Association). He regularly gives presentations for the docents at our meetings, and contributes articles to the "Focused" newsletter.

When he isn't stargazing with his 12" Dob, he can be found playing traditional Celtic music on the Irish whistle. He is an interesting, fun fellow, be sure and come join us for his talk. Usual time, same location—February 8th, 7:30 pm at Proctor Terrace School.

—John Whitehouse, SCAS Vice President/Program Director


Many thanks to John Whitehouse and all the folks who participated in our telescope discussion at the January meeting.

 

 

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