A massive, hot supergiant, Kappa Cassiopeiae is surrounded by a streaky red glow of material in its path called bow shocks, often seen in front of the fastest, most massive stars in the galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
UCSB astrophysicist Matteo Cantiello answers audience questions at the first Café KITP. Credit:Spencer BruttigThe stars came out on Wednesday night at SOhO restaurant in Santa Barbara. In fact, it was a standing-room-only crowd for these stars. The audience came to enjoy the inaugural Café KITP, a series aimed at opening up dialogue between physicists and the public. The first talk in the series was presented by UCSB astrophysicist Matteo Cantiello, who spoke on “Music of the Spheres: The Secret Songs of the Stars.”
The stars play beautiful music, through oscillations that travel many light-years to reach Earth, Cantiello explained to the crowd. By shifting the pitch several octaves, humans are able to hear the sounds of these oscillations, he added. “Humans have always tried to understand what the lights in the sky are as well as their meaning and function,” the Kavli astrophysicist told the audience in explaining the important role stars have in the chemical evolution of the universe.
The idea for Café KITP came about as a collaboration between UC Santa Barbara’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and its journalist in residence, Ivan Amato, who is a science and technology writer, editor, and communicator based in Silver Spring, Maryland. In May 2011, Amato had spearheaded DC Science Café at a local eatery and cultural gathering place, Busboys and Poets, in an effort to engage the public with science issues.
“One of the drivers for me is that science is part of culture, not apart from it,” Amato said in an Office of Public Affairs and Communications (OPAC) news release. “I think the greatest gift that science has to offer is really the invitation to experience awe as science reveals how nature works.”
Greg Huber, deputy director of KITP, said in the release: “What the KITP is really good at is bringing researchers together from around the world and creating for a period the world’s greatest academic department in one particular area. And we’ve done that for the field of astrophysics.”
Café KITP’s motto is “Eat, THINK, and be merry!” Audiences will be able to do so every few months when the Café KITP events are held. For more information about Café KITP, its events and topics, visit KITP’s Café KITP page. For the full OPAC article, read the Café KITP news release.
KITP journalist in residence Ivan Amato facilitates questions from the crowd. Credit: Spencer Bruttig