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Imagine a universe devoid of all elements apart from hydrogen, helium, and lithium. That was the state of the Universe until the formation of the first stars, around a hundred million years after the Big Bang. These stars began to forge the elements we see today through nuclear fusion and dispersed them via supernovae explosions in a process known as enrichment. Relic second-generation stars preserve the elements produced by the first stars. They allow us to study initial enrichment in detail.

The third in our 2026 lecture series drew over 90 attendees at the Peninsula Astronomical Society

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is poised to launch its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time. After years of work by over 2,000 scientists and engineers worldwide, this survey will reshape our view of the dynamic Universe. What’s unfolding now, and what Universe will LSST reveal?

The second in our 2026 lecture series was a sold out event at the De Anza College Planetarium

Much of our understanding of cosmology is anchored in observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the oldest light in our Universe. An ongoing major upgrade to the Simons Observatory will soon allow us to survey the sky faster and more sensitively, allowing us to pierce deeper into the static CMB while simultaneously capturing the transient events that make up our dynamic Universe.

The first in our 2026 lecture series kicked off with a sold out event at the College of San Mateo Planetarium

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are millions to billions of times more massive than the sun. How SMBHs work is one of the key questions in astrophysics because they test the behavior of matter in strong gravitational fields, and their growth is strongly connected to how galaxies themselves evolve. Their X-ray emission can unveil the structure of the SMBH system.

Right now, a few relativistic particles are passing through your head every second at the speed of light. They have more than ten million times more energy than our best particle accelerator can achieve, and scientists still don’t know how nature does that!