General Meeting: “A Graphical Tour of the Cosmos”

PRESENTATION: A Graphical Tour of the Cosmos
w/ Dr. Ed Friedman

This presentation features animated graphical tools — built on real solutions to Einstein’s equations of gravity — that let us explore the universe visually, without requiring you to work through the math yourself. Using real data from ground and space telescopes, including Planck, DESI, and JWST, we’ll explore the cosmos’s historical rate of expansion, its geometry, the velocity of distant galaxies, its age, and its future. We’ll see how measurements of things we can observe reveal properties we can’t observe directly, and how independent methods — the cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, and supernova surveys — converge on a consistent picture. We’ll dig into the current central puzzle of the Hubble tension, recent controversies in dark energy measurements, and JWST’s surprising discoveries about the early universe. This talk is a window into the actual techniques professional astronomers use to build our current understanding of the cosmos.

OUR SPEAKER:

Dr. Edward Friedman is a retired, award-winning physicist and space scientist with over 50 years of experience with ground- and space-based telescope systems. He holds a PhD in physics. He is the author/editor of four books on optical engineering and space navigation. As an adjunct professor, he successfully supervised the PhD dissertation of an optical engineering student at the University of Colorado. He has advised the National Academy of Sciences on NASA’s science strategy for developing large astronomical space telescopes. He has taught college algebra, astronomy, and a graduate-level course on orbital dynamics. He has been quoted on space exploration issues in the New York Times. He is the author or co-author of 79 professional journal articles and related publications. He regularly teaches adult education classes on cosmology and quantum physics at the University of Denver and Colorado State University. Open to members and non-members alike, the Monthly General Meetings feature club announcements, member observing reports, and a headline guest speaker. Speakers typically hail from one of Colorado’s many science or technical organizations and share their experiences on a wide range of astronomy topics.

Location:
In-person at the Secular Hub (254 N. Knox Ct., Denver, CO 80219).
Meeting attendees are welcome to arrive at Secular Hub starting at 6:30 p.m.