Colloquium: Dr. Andrew Yau

Fri. Oct. 19 12:30 PM - Fri. Oct. 19 01:20 PM
Location: 3M62

Andrew W. Yau

University of Calgary, Department of Physics and Astronomy

The Physics of Thin Air: Tracking the Aurora and Other Space Weather Phenomena

Ever wonder if the Earth is gaining or losing “weight” (mass)? And ever wonder why comets have a long comet tail? We will study the link between these two topics, by applying the law of gravity and Gauss’s law for magnetism, with data from the Canadian CASSIOPE satellite. We will explore how the Earth’s upper atmosphere and magnetic field respond to the Sun’s electromagnetic and corpuscular radiation; and how the aurora and other space weather phenomena affect our increasingly technology-dependent society.