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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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The School of Physics welcomes University of California, San Diego Associate Professor Tom Murphy as a featured speaker for its Inquiring Minds Lecture Series. Murphy is a Georgia Tech graduate and the current associate director for UCSD's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
Abstract:
Combining knowledge of physics with a healthy willingness to estimate and approximate, we can say some rather profound things about future paths available to our society in terms of energy and resources. Topics such as growth, global warming, fossil fuels and their potential replacements, and energy storage are ripe targets for back-of-the-envelope quantification, and will be explored in this talk. A subtext is that we should not take for granted that superior substitutes will replace fossil fuels.
