Air Date: May 25, 2009

Robert Morehead

Tides: More Than What Floats Your Boat

Anyone who has spent a day on the beach knows about tides, but this cosmic phenomena is at play throughout the Universe. We'll explore this gravitational tug-o-war and see its effect on the evolution of astronomical systems, from the sandy shores of Earth and ice-covered seas of Europe, to fiery star-skimming exoplants and the delicate dance between galaxies. Bio of Speaker:

Robert Morehead is a former burger-flipper and science outreach educator who is celebrating the IYA by finishing a B.S. degree in astrophysics at Columbia University. Actually, he will have graduated a week before this podcast airs! While at Columbia he has worked on a robotic telescope for lunar observation and modeled tidal evolution in exoplanet systems. He plans to continue on to grad school and would like to continue working on exoplanets. His hobbies are numerous and all of them are nerdy.