Astronomy on Tap Triangle #10: Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Join us for another Astronomy on Tap Triangle, our North Carolina chapter of short, engaging talks about astronomy over beer held at the taproom of Fullsteam Brewery in Durham, NC — this our tenth event on Tuesday, November 6!

On the evening of Election Day 2018, we’ll hear about some of the biggest open questions in space from two astronomers who have recently moved to the Triangle. We’ll also start the night with some special space trivia! First up, Dr. Andrew Mann*, Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at UNC Chapel Hill, will tell us about the story of young planets. Then Dr. Jeremy Murphy** will tell us what a tennis ball can tell us about dark matter, which makes up more than 85% of the matter in the universe but we cannot detect!

*Dr. Andrew Mann is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at UNC Chapel Hill. Andrew’s research focuses on understanding how planets evolve over their lifetimes by comparing the properties of young planets to their older counterparts. He also works more generally on statistical properties of exoplanets using data from the NASA Kepler, K2, and TESS space missions. Andrew received a B.S. in Physics from Johns Hopkins University, a Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and was a Harlan J. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow and Hubble Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University. He recently moved to south Durham after joining the faculty at UNC in Fall 2018.

**Dr. Jeremy Murphy is a Special Projects Manager in Curriculum Design at IXL Learning, an educational technology company offering educational practice for K-12 students. Jeremy spent more than a decade researching in astronomy, focused on using the kinematic and chemical signatures of the stars in the outer halos of elliptical galaxies to constrain their formation history. He obtained a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of Texas at Austin, and was subsequently an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. He is an especially avid fan of the Boston Red Sox.

Our FREE Astronomy on Tap events feature accessible, engaging science presentations on topics ranging from planets to black holes to the beginning of the Universe. There is always lots of time to ask questions and interact with the presenters and other scientists who inevitably stick around for the beer.

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