Some news out of ASU

Two quick shots ...

Firstly, ASU is planning to install a 2 megawatt roof-top solar grid that will provide over 20% of the power to our campus. The installation is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

That’s enough to run 4,600 computers and reduce carbon emissions by 2,825 tons per year, or the equivalent of taking 530 cars off the road for a year. Long-term plans call for up to 7 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be built at ASU in Tempe, with additional solar installations at its campuses in downtown Phoenix and other locations.

Secondly, Lawrence Krauss (of The Physics of Star Trek fame) is joining our faculty as a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration where he will lead an initiative to study origins.

To jump start the origins initiative at ASU, Krauss is organizing an origins symposium for April 5-7 with Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Craig Venter, and at least five Nobel laureates in different areas, including Frank Wilczek.

"This sort of symposium will help raise the intellectual energy in the region," Krauss says. He plans to bring 100-150 "of the best people in the different areas, and have sessions on forefront puzzles, outstanding mysteries in each of these areas; and some of the most active young people as well as senior people, so key discoveries will likely be unveiled."

In addition to the working symposium, "we’ll have a public symposium, which will, I think, be at a level that is probably unheard of in the world in terms of the quality and public profile of the speakers," Krauss says.

He envisions other outreach efforts, including a workshop for science writers and journalists to interface with well-known scientists to talk about key origins issues "so that the journalists can better report on topics including evolution."

Exciting stuff.