After our successful first season, and a healthy summer break, we kicked off season two of Café Scientifique Syracuse last night, with a gathering of just under fifty people at our swanky downtown venue - Ambrosia. Our speaker for the all-important first talk was my friend and Café Scientifique Syracuse co-organizer Scott Samson, Jessie Page Heroy Professor and Chair of the Earth Sciences department. One of Scott's areas of expertise is geochronology, and his presentation was titled The Dating Game: How We Know the Earth is 4.5 Billion Years Old In 20 minutes precisely (and this is quite a feat, since keeping speakers to time is a real challenge in this setting), Scott was able to cover radiocarbon dating, the physics of solar system formation, the origin of the heavy elements, the role of plate tectonics (basically in making it particularly difficult to find rocks which date from the earliest times, because of recycling material as the plates move), and the origin of the moon, among many other fascinating topics. After our usual 10-minute break to refill our glasses and to stock up on various sushi snacks, we reconvened for the discussion period, which was rather lively and lasted for a further hour. While we didn't have any young Earth creationists in the audience, one interesting question was how to respond when confronted with such a person. Scott provided an impressive array of different techniques and measurements that solidly place the Earth's age around 4.5 billion years. This would be more than enough to convince any reasonable person, but, sadly, I suspect that anyone who is truly a young Earth creationist is well past the point where reasoned argument and evidence will have an effect. It was something of a relief to see our series pick up with about the same popularity as when we left off in May. One never knows if the momentum will be sustainable, but if last night is anything to go by, we're doing just fine. The rest of this semester's speakers should be wonderful. Our schedule for the next two months in particular is
October 3, 2006 On Being Healthy as a Horse: Where Do We Put Descartes?Prof. Joshua Smyth (Department of Psychology)
November 7, 2006 Controlling Turbulence: Is it feasible?Prof. Mark Glauser (Associate Director for Research, EQS Center; Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering, Syracuse University)
I know both these guys personally and can guarantee that they will be lively, engaging and entertaining speakers. If you're in the area, please drop by - we love to see new faces at our meetings.
