The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings: Day 4, Wednesday

Florian Freistetter was our chief of astronomy today, and blogged about the day’s astronomy lectures by laureates:

435,457,355 Stars
435,457,355 stars had to be measured for the Hubble Space Telescope to function properly. Riccardo Giacconi began today’s lecture series with the history of X-ray astronomy and the Hubble telescope. And he said that, concerning astrophysics, we live in an exceptional transitional period, just like during the time of Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus about 400 years ago.

CSI: Cosmic Scene Investigator
The title of today’s lecture by physics Nobel Prize winner George Smoot was “CSI: Cosmic Scene Investigator.” There are a few hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Where do they come from–and how did they all emerge? Astronomy is fortunate not only to be able to see very distant things, but also objects that come from very far in the past! The farther away a celestial body is, the longer its light takes to reach us. This effect allows scientists to look deep into our universe’s past.

Particle Accelerator and the Superworld
Martinus Veltmann told the story of particle accelerators, and David Gross explained the “superworld.”

Bangladesh at Lindau
Laura and Wolfgang have been busy looking around today, talking to young researchers, looking into the books of Lindau and last not least finding a blogger from Bangladesh!. “Bangladesh blogs with us,” they write. Bangladeshi young researchers report on their experiences here at Lindau at the Lindau Bangladesh Participants blog.

Four Young Scientists
Laura and Wolfgang also made the acquaintance of four young researchers attending the meetings here at Lindau.

Nicole Killat is 23 and studies technical physics at the Technical University Ilmenau.

Siva Theja Maguluri has something in common with Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever: Both come via engineering.

Jan comes from Schwaben, Germany, and is working on his PhD in Innsbruck, Austria. Next week, the 23-year-old scientist will have finished it.

Zhanna Santybayeva from Kasachstan dreams of research. She doesn’t want to be a professor, but she thinks science is fun.

The Island of Lindau: History and Views
Finally, Wolfgang give us some historical views of Lindau, especially the island of Lindau.

Thanks to Katherine Sharpe of ScienceBlogs.com for her help!