Quest University's president is set to unravel some of history's mysteries atom by atom.
David Helfand has written close to 200 scientific publications covering areas of modern astrophysics, including radio, optical and X-ray observations of celestial sources - from neighbouring stars to distant quasars. Helfand recently completed a major project surveying the galaxy with a sensitivity and angular resolution 100 times greater than previously available. His goal is to paint a complete picture of the birth and death of the stars in the Milky Way.
On Thursday, Dec. 12, at the Squamish Public Library, Helfand will give a presentation on The Universal Timekeepers: Reconstructing Pre-History Atom by Atom. The free talk explores reconstructing, in quantitative detail, a range of human and natural events.
From a detailed history of the Earth's climate, to the events surrounding the origin of the solar system and the history of the universe itself, these universal timekeepers provide a precise chronology from the beginning of time to the moment humans emerge to contemplate such questions, Helfand stated in a press release.
"Just as a book is made of pages that have words composed of letters, all things are made of molecules constructed from atoms composed of quarks and leptons," Helfand said.
For example, one is quite literally what you eat, he explained. Scientists can tell a lot about your diet by examining you at the atomic scale, he said. Since some of the atoms act like little clocks, they can reconstruct your diet long after you're dead.
"This leads to a history of agriculture. And since plants also are what they eat, I can read the record of past climate in their atomic structure," Helfand stated. "And these histories don't suffer from the biases of human historians - it is written in the atoms and all you need to do is count them."
The free talk will start at 6:30 p.m. For more information visit www.questu.ca.
