All Over Albany

"Art & Cosmos" talks at SPAC

This August SPAC is bringing in a handful of speakers for talks about the intersections of art, science, and nature. And it's a solid lineup:

+ Astronaut/artist Nicole Stott

+ Science reporter/author Dava Sobel and essayist/naturalist Diane Ackerman

+ Physicist/cosmologist/musician/author Stephon Alexander

The schedule additional blurbage is below.

The talks will be on the SPAC main stage. The speaker will be at the conductor's podium and the audience will sit in the orchestra chairs. Tickets are $20 each.

The talks are at 8 pm. Blurbage via SPAC.

August 2: eARTh from Space: Nicole Stott
"Nicole Stott has explored from the heights of outer space to the depths of our oceans. In awe of what she has experienced from these very special vantage points, she has dedicated her life to sharing the beauty of Earth from space with others. She believes that sharing these orbital and inner space perspectives has the power to increase everyone's appreciation of and obligation to care for our home planet and each other."

August 9: Earth and Other Worlds: Dava Sobel and Diane Ackerman
"Dava Sobel is a science writer and author of Galileo's Daughter and The Glass Universe. Diane Ackerman is a poet, science writer, and author of A Natural History of the Senses, The Human Age, and The Zookeeper's Wife." (Dava Sobel also wrote Longitude.)

August 16: The Jazz of Physics: Stephon Alexander
"Physicist and Musician Stephon Alexander has straddled the two worlds of theoretical physics and jazz music over the last two decades. He obtained his Bachelors of Science from Haverford College and Doctorate from Brown and was a research physicist at Imperial College, London and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University."

"On the physics front Alexander's works on the connection between the smallest and largest entities in the universe pushing Einstein's theory of curved space-time to extremes, beyond the big bang with sub atomic phenomena. Alexander is a specialist in the field of string cosmology, where the physics of superstrings are applied to address longstanding questions in cosmology. In 2001, he co-invented the model of inflation based on higher dimensional hypersurfaces in string theory called D-Branes. In such models the early universe emerged from the destruction of a higher dimensional D-brane which ignites a period of rapid expansion of space often referred to as cosmic inflation."

"Alexander is also a Jazz saxophonist and has been mentored by Ornette Coleman and Will Calhoun. He has expanded his repertoire to an avant-garde electronic medium as seen in a critically acclaimed Album with RIOUX entitled Here Comes Now. Alexander recently completed his first trade book that delves into the secret link between music and the structure of the universe, The Jazz of Physics."