"Cosmic Conversations" was a series of lectures that lasted from 2007 to 2015. Scheduled at 7 pm the first Wednesday evening of each month, there would be a speaker who talked about some cosmos-related topic. Afterwards, Laws Observatory would open from 8 to 10 pm, allowing for viewing of the heavens (weather permitting of course). As an added boon, the lights on Stankowski Field would be turned off, massively decreasing the light-pollution, improving the view.
Angela Speck
Pluto's Demise and Resurrection
Angela Speck
Why Astrology is Nonsense
Angela Speck
From Big Bang to Life - the Origin of the Elements
Alex Sehlke
From Big Bang to Life - the Origin of the Elements
Alan Whittington
Comet and Asteroid Impacts
(First Show)
Alan Whittington
Comet and Asteroid Impacts
(Second Show)
Zack Buck
Neutron Scattering
Nick Parmley
Connecting the Dot: a Cultural Tour of the Heavens
Past Talks
Talk 1: A Tour Through the Constellations
Talk 2: Saturn: Lord of the Rings
David Arrant
Talk 1: The Elusive Neutrino
Sean Baldridge
Talk 1: Dog Stars and Divine Hunters: Heavenly Bodies in Early Greek Poetry and Myths
Michael Barnes
Talk 1: Cosmic Reflections on the Cultural Landscape
Larry Brown
Talk 1: Applications of Neutron Scattering and the Techniques Used to Advance out Understanding of Complex Materials
Zack Buck
Talk 1: Spaghettification, and other ways the Universe is trying to kill you
Dan Caputo
Talk 1: 20th Century Telescopes: Race to the Edge of the Universe
Caitlin Casey
Talk 1: The Infinite Order: Religion and Astronomy in Ancient India
Signe Cohen
Talk 1: Lives and Deaths of Stars
Adrian Corman
Talk 1: Science is Going Green: How Astronomy gets Funded
Eric Cropp
Talk 1: One Small Step: Building the Distance Ladder
Nelson De Souza
Talk 1: The History of Radio Astronomy
Cori Fletcher
Talk 1: Telescopes, Optics and the Renovation of the Laws Observatory 16-inch 'Scope
Talk 2: Rooftop Sky Tour
Talk 3: What's Up: the Night Sky for the Winter/Spring Semester
Talk 4: Telescopes: How they work and what you can see with them
Val Germann
Talk 1: Prebiotic synthesis of biological molecules in interstellar space
Rainer Glaser
Talk 1: Exploring Space from Low Earth Orbit: Where do we go from here?
Linda Godwin
Talk 1: Power up with Plastics
Suchi Guha
Talk 1: The Lives of Stars
Suklima Guha Niyogi
Talk 1: Under Aboriginal Skies: The astronomy of Indigenous Australian
Duane Hamacher
Talk 1: Habitable Exoplanets and the Goldilocks Zone
Aaron Kaberline
Talk 1: A Personal History of NASA Projects
Craig Kleuver
Talk 1: Curiosity and Spirit: Missions to Mars
Phil Knocke
Will you explode in space and other movie myths
Harrison Knoll
Talk 1: The Sun, Our Star
ShunLin Liang
Talk 1: It Came from Outer Space: Recent controversies regarding the K/T boundary
Ken MacLeod
Talk 1: The fate of the universe
Bahram Mashhoon
Talk 1: The Day That Time Began
Wouter Montfrooij
Talk 1: Islam and the Moon
Arielle Newgard
Talk 1: Connecting the Dots: a cultural tour of the heavens
Nick Parmley
Talk 1: Night-time Photography
Rita Reed
Talk 1: Women in Astronomy
Talk 2: The Universe on Your Computer
Lanika Ruzhitskaya
Talk 1: Volcanoes of the Solar System
Alex Sehlke
Talk 1: Was Galileo Really a Martyr for Scientific Truth?
Mark Smith
Talk 1: Dust, Dirt, and Debris in the Solar System
Josh Tartar
Talk 1: Anthropic principle and multiverses
Carsten Ullrich
Talk 1: Global Warming, Climate Change, and Impacts on the US
Mike Urban
Talk 1: Man and Woman Circle the Hearth: Archaeoastronomy in the American Southwest
Todd VanPool
Talk 1: The Distance of the Moon: A physicist's improvisation on the Earth-Moon system, love, and the laws of physics
Giovanni Vignale
Talk 1: Is the moon made of cheese? Misconceptions in Astronomy
Mark Volkmann
Talk 1: Armageddon: Meteorite Impacts
Talk 2: Mars!
Talks 3 & 4: Comet and Asteroid Impacts!
Alan Whittington
Talk 1: HST, JWST and why they are important
Haojing Yan
Matt Connolly & Tom Zhang
Angela Speck
Talk 1: Planetary Nebulae - beauty in stellar death
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Talk 2: Are we really gonna die? Myths about the end of the world and what the Mayans have to do with it
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Talk 3: Pluto's Demise and Resurrection
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Talk 4: Nuclear processes in the cosmos
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Talk 5: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Moon, But Were Afraid To Ask
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Talk 6: The rabbit in the moon and other lunar myths
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Talk 7: Why Astrology is Nonsense
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Talk 8: From the Big Bang to Life - the Origin of the Elements
These are in alphabetical order by last name
