Cafe Scientifique Orlando is a gathering of scientifically-inclined people in Central Florida, who meet at a cafe, coffee house, pub, or nonacademic location to discuss events and ideas in the world of science. We enjoy beer and wine, and we use plain language to talk about extraordinary ideas.

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Deep Time and Shallow Thermodynamics

Full Title: 
Deep Time and Shallow Thermodynamics: How we know the age of the solar system
Presenter: 
Britt, Dan
When: 
Wednesday, 2 February 2011 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Venue: 
Taste
Where: 
Taste
Street:
717 W. Smith Street
City:
Orlando
,
Province:
Florida
Postal Code:
32804
Country:
United States

The age of the solar system (and Earth) has had a long history of contentious debate, most famously in the last decade of the 19th century between Lord Kelvin and his one-time assistant John Perry. Today radiometric dating has the precision to detail events during the formation of the solar system and the geochemical evolution of the Earth. Dr Britt will review how we know the ages of the Solar System and the Earth and how that knowledge has changed our understanding of their formation and evolution.

Dr. Daniel Britt is an Associate Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences in the Department of Physics at UCF. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of two NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1. He was the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built hardware for all the NASA Mars landers. He currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, and Mars under several NASA grants. Honors include 5 NASA Achievement Awards, election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and an asteroid named after him: 4395 DanBritt. He was recently elected President of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

Slides of the presentation are available. MSFT PPT / ODP / PDF

Future Café Scientifique Events

Our next scheduled topic is…

Organ Transplantation

Presenter: 
Vedula, Giridhar
When: 
Wednesday, 3 July 2013 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Venue: 
Taste
Where: 
Taste
Street:
717 W. Smith Street
City:
Orlando
,
Province:
Florida
Postal Code:
32804
Country:
United States

We’ll explore the different facets of solid-organ transplant and identify scientific breakthroughs that have helped us improve the quality of life among patients, and we’ll shed light onto the potential future of the field. Additionally, we will examine the fundamental principles of transplant and how they have resulted in medical and surgical innovation.

Giridhar Vedula MD is a multi-organ transplant surgeon at Florida Hospital, and focuses his practice primarily on liver, kidney and pancreas transplants. He trained at Columbia University in transplant surgery.

…and after that,
The Light on Other Planets 9 July, 2013 - 18:00 downtown library
More on Nanotechnology 7 August, 2013 - 19:00 Taste

Past Café Scientifique Events
Science Experiments in Microgravity 11 June, 2013 - 18:00 downtown library
Space-Faring Civilization 5 June, 2013 - 19:00 Taste
Skulls of Our Ancestors 14 May, 2013 - 18:00 downtown library
After the Maya Apocalypse 1 May, 2013 - 19:00 Taste
Nanotechnology Is Already Here 3 April, 2013 - 19:00 Taste
New National Wildlife Refuge 6 March, 2013 - 19:00 Taste
Teamwork 6 February, 2013 - 19:00 Taste
Asteroids, Water, and Life on Earth 9 January, 2013 - 19:00 Taste
Poor and Homeless in Florida 5 December, 2012 - 19:00 Taste
Seeing cancer before it's too late 7 November, 2012 - 19:00 Taste
Marine Ecosystems In Peril 3 October, 2012 - 19:00 Taste
A Theory of Everything 5 September, 2012 - 19:00 Taste

…and older topics all the way back to summer of 2008!

Topics We'd Love to See

What are some topics you’d like to have? Tell us in your comments below. See our full schedule to know what we’ve had and plan to have, before adding something new.

Additionally, if you are a scientific expert interested in presenting a topic, please email us.

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