5TH ANNUAL BIG BANG MILE

***** SCIENCE TALKS *****

Hosted by S*T*A*R Astronomy​

 www.starastronomy.org 

LOCATION

Holmdel Township Meeting Room

101 Crawfords Corner Road
Holmdel, NJ  07733
​
DATE
Sunday, July 12, 2026
9:00 am
*** FREE ADMISSION ***
... BUT you must REGISTER HERE as seating will be limited!

2025 EVENT Program (for reference)

SCHEDULE

  9:00 am               Welcoming remarks                          Scott Linnell (Shore Athletic Club)
  9:10 am               Introduction of Speaker #1                Robert Nunn (S*T*A*R Astronomy Club)
  9:15 am               Presentation on cosmology               Yudai Sieno, Princeton University
10:05 am               Questions and Answers
10:15 am               10-minute break begins
10:25 am               Introduction of speaker #2                  Robert Nunn (S*T*A*R Astronomy Club)
10:30 am               Presentation on nuclear fusion           Erik Flom, Thea Energy
11:20 am               Questions and answers
11:30 am               Program ends

9:15 AM – Presentation on Cosmology: "Advances in Measuring the CMB and Dark Matter".  Presented by Yudai Seino, PhD, Princeton University.

Yudai Seino is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University's Department of Physics.  He earned his PhD in experimental particle physics at the University of Toyko in Japan, where he conducted searches for new physics phenomena and particles through photon-photon scattering with high-intensity lasers.  He subsequently moved into cosmic microwave background (CMB) research at Kyoto University and Princeton University. Now full time at Princeton University, he develops superconducting detectors and calibration systems and contributes to CMB observations for the Simons Observatory.

​Click here for a recording of the talk.

​10:30 AM – Presentation on nuclear fusion energy: "Thea Energy: Building Scalable Fusion Power Plants".  Presented by: Erik Flom, Thea Energy.

Erik Flom is a senior scientist at Thea Energy who recently received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his PhD, Erik spent three years embedded in the physics team at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany. While there, Erik designed and performed experiments to understand heat- and particle transport in the island divertor of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator. To do this, he constructed, modeled, and operated a spectroscopic diagnostic (helium line-ratio spectroscopy) to measure electron temperature and electron density profiles in the plasma, allowing detailed comparison between experiment and modeling predictions.

Click here for a recording of the talk.