May 24- May 30, 2004 THE BOSTON AREA PHYSICS CALENDAR The Boston Area Physics Calendar is published weekly during the academic year by the Department of Physics at Boston University. You may send your announcement by e-mail (bapc-events@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu ) or FAX (617-353-9393). We cannot accept announcements by telephone. Entries should reach us no later than 5:00pm on the Tuesday of the week proceeding the week of the event. ENTRIES RECEIVED AFTER THE DEADLINE WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED. Harvard University Special Condensed Matter and Applied Physics Colloquium Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Monday, May 24th, 2pm Pierce 209 "Tau induces cooperative taxol binding to microtubules" Jennifer Ross UC Santa Barbara Monday, May 24, 2004 Monday, May 24, 2004, 2:00PM Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear & Particle Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics, Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``Anomalous anyons and exotic particles" Peter Horvathy University Tours, France Refreshments will be served Tuesday, May 25, 2004 Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 2:00PM (note day and time) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear and Particle Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics Building 5, third floor seminar room ``Lessons for QCD from String Theory" Charles Thorn University of Florida Refreshments will be served Tue, May 25, 12:30pm Scott Gaudi (CfA) Microlensing Searches for Extrasolar Planets I review the theory of, results from, and future prospects for microlensing searches for extrasolar planets. Analyses of well-sampled microlensing light curves by several collaborations have demonstrated that current searches are quite sensitive to Jupiter-mass planets at a few AU separations from M-dwarfs in the Galactic bulge. To date, however, no clear planetary detections have been made. Detailed analysis has shown that this null result implies that less than 1/3 of typical stars (i.e. M-dwarfs) in the Galactic bulge have Jupiter-mass (M ~ M_J) companions between 1.5 and 4 AU, and less than 45% have (M~3M_J) companions between 1 and 7 AU. Recent upgrades by the OGLE collaboration have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of alerted microlensing events per year. This has allowed for much more efficient searches for planets, and has led to the first detection of a planet with microlensing. Within a few years, it will be possible to constrain the frequency of companions with mass as small as ~15 Earth masses to ~10%. Finally, I speculate on the future of microlensing planet searches, focusing on the prospects for the detection Earth-mass planets. I argue that microlensing is likely to be the only technique to supply reliable detections of Earth-mass planets in the next decade. The seminar will be held in Pratt Conference Room (G04) at 60 Garden St., CfA. ---------------------------- Wed, May 26, 12:30pm Eli Waxman (Weizmann Institute) Gamma-Ray Bursts: Progress and open questions The discovery during the past few years of X-ray to radio emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) led to dramatic evolution in our understanding of these explosions. We have strong evidence that GRBs are triggered by the energy released during the formation of few solar mass black holes, most likely following the collapse of a massive star. Many questions related to the underlying physics of the model remain, however, open. Recent developments in our understanding of GRBs will be described and the prospects for resolving remaining open questions will be discussed. The seminar will be held in Pratt Conference Room (G04) at 60 Garden St., CfA. Wednesday, May 26, 2004 Wednesday, May 26, 2004, 2:30PM Massachusetts Institute of Technology String/Gravity Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics, Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``Symmetries and conserved charges in two dimensional string theory" Ashoke Sen TATA Institute Refreshments will be served Thursday, May 27, 2004 Thursday, May 27, 2004, 4:00 pm Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Phillips Auditorium 60 Garden Street, Cambridge Ceclilia Payne-Gaposchkin Lecture "Galaxy Evolution over the Latter Half of Cosmic History" Sandy Faber Astronomy Dept, UC Santa Cruz * tea and cookies at 3:30 p.m. * Thursday, May 27, 2004, 4:15 p.m. Harvard University Duality Seminar Jefferson 453 "Time Dependent Backgrounds in Two Dimensional String Theory" Sumit Das University of Kentucky Refreshments served in the High Energy Theory coffee area, 4th floor Jefferson, at 3:45 Friday, May 28, 2004 To unsubscribe from the BAPC announcement list, send an email to bapc-request@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu and in the body put "unsubscribe".