I am still feeling my way about what kind of website to offer for the planetarium.  Being a scientist who engages in active research in addition to my educational roles (I’m a full-time professor at Lambuth as well as planetarium director), I think it’s important to share discoveries that might be interesting to you, the reader.

So I would like to take an informal poll:  do you read the science postings I have started writing recently?  If you do, what kinds of things would you like me to talk about?  Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to planetarium@lambuth.edu, and I will use them to help provide the kind of site people will want to read.

Cheers,
Matthew Francis
Director, M.D. Anderson Planetarium

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes & Science Ideas | No Comments »

Is there water on Mars?  We know the answer is “yes”, since Mars has ice caps at both poles that grow and shrink with the seasons.  The real, harder questions are:  how much water is on Mars, and where is it located? Continue Reading »

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Alas, I still haven’t processed all of my notes from the Great Lakes Cosmology Workshop I attended two weeks ago.  I learned a great deal, and got caught up on some research topics I hadn’t heard about in a few years, so overall I think it was a successful trip.  However, my promised posts did not happen, for which I apologize.

In lieu of trying to explain some of the talks I heard (most of which are probably not of general interest), I will post some topics over the next few days that are related to cutting-edge research in cosmology.  Stay tuned!

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes | No Comments »

I have safely arrived in Pittsburgh, and based on preliminary conversation with some of my fellow conference attendees, the talks are going to be very interesting.  I will pass along as much information as I can. If you missed the item posted before, I am at the Great Lakes Cosmology Conference at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. 

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Over the last 100 years or so, our view of the universe has changed dramatically.  It was possible in the early 20th century to think that our galaxy (literally meaning Milky Way, same root as “lactose” and “lactate”) might be the entire universe.  The famous “Great Debate” between astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis was over whether the observed “spiral nebulae” were part of our galaxy, or separate galaxies in their own right. The issue wasn’t settled during the debate, but several years later by Edwin Hubble, who used techniques developed by Henrietta Swan Leavitt to measure the distance to the Andromeda galaxy.  Needless to say, he found the distance to be much larger than the size of the Milky Way, thus showing the universe to be a very large place.

Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) and Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921)

Continue Reading »

Posted by Matthew R. Francis under Director's Notes & Science Ideas & Science News | No Comments »