News and events

This food share program provides food for UVic students through the Multifaith Centre.

Closed 12-1PM

Meaning "to share the teachings" in Nuu chah nulth, Haa huupa offers a chance for us to digest some Indigenous knowledge along with our food. Please bring your lunch to this continuing series, organized by Fine Arts Indigenous Resurgence CoordinatorKarla Point. This week's guest is Danielle Geller, Acting Dean Indigenous for UVic's Faculty of Fine Arts

Join other graduate students to write weekly in the library.

Visit Pet Café for cuddles with therapy dogs while enjoying free coffee, tea, and cookies.

"How physicists are helping reform nuclear weapons policies"

Physicists invented nuclear weapons over seventy-five years ago. Today, they still threaten humanity with catastrophe and, recently, this risk has been increasing. The US has over 1,500 deployednuclear weapons plus thousands more inactive or retired. Current policy calls for maintaining and "modernizing" about 4,000 nuclear warheads and their delivery vehicles, at the cost of several tensof billions of dollars per year and significant risks to the environment and public health. All modern thermonuclear weapons contain plutonium pits, which are hollow spherical shells of plutoniummetal, as part of their fission triggers. I will explain why these pits are inherently difficult, costly and hazardous to produce. Current US policy calls for unachievable and dangerous levels ofplutonium pit production. Furthermore, I will outline why the justifications for these production goals and their concomitant massive construction projects are dubious. Physicists can and do play animportant role in providing scientific oversight and advocating for reform.

Biography:

Dr. Curtis T. Asplund is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at San José State University, California. He completed postdocs at Columbia University and KU Leuven,and earned his Ph.D. in physics from UC Santa Barbara. His research focuses on theoretical aspects of black holes, entanglement in quantum field theory, and the role of physicists in nucleardisarmament. During 2022, studied nuclear weapons policy as a Next-Generation Fellow with the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction,of which he is now a Project Team Member. He has written about reforming nuclear weapons policies in The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists , The Progressive , and Physics & Society .

Speaker: Ian Putnam, University of Victoria
Location: CLE D134
Event type: Operator theory seminar