APS Mid-Atlantic Senior Physicists Group

MASPG Home | Meetings, Events & Topics

The MASPG meetings are held at the American Center for Physics, College Park, MD which is located near the intersection of River Road and Kenilworth Ave. It is easily accessible by either car or Metro.

Upcoming Meetings

APS March Meeting 2025
March 3-7, 2025

APS March Meeting 2026
March 16-20, 2026

View APS Meeting Calendar

Past Meetings

Earth's co-evolving geosphere and biosphere: A mineral evolution perspective
November 16, 2022

Stochastic Computational Electrostatics and Applications: Computing Capacitance
October 19, 2022

Asteroids: Stepping Stones to the Future of Space Exploration
September 28, 2022

Virtual Tour of NASA Wallops Flight Facility Operations
August 17, 2022

The Nature of Time from the Planck Time until Now, and Maybe Beyond
June 15, 2022

Quantum Hall Array Structures Apply Quantized Resistance in the Wider World
May 18, 2022

The Murrow Boys – News Broadcasting During WWII
April 19, 2022

Modeling Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics by Blending Ideas from Machine Learning and Physics
March 16, 2022

The Exploration of the Moon and then onto Mars
February 16, 2022

Magnetic Reconnection and Particle Acceleration in Space and Astrophysical Systems
January 19, 2022

Supporting a New Industry: NBS’ Measurements and Standards for Radio
December 14, 2021

Progress Towards High-gain Inertial Confinement Fusion With Lasers
November 17, 2021

Excess Neutron Shell Model to Explain Stable Isotopes and Non Existance of Stable Isotopes Beyond Atomic Number 83
October 20, 2021

An Introduction to Forensic DNA Typing
September 15, 2021

An Introduction to Forensic DNA Typing
September 15, 2021

Virtual Tour of Radio Astronomy and the Green Bank Observatory
August 18, 2021

How Science Fiction Becomes Science
May 19, 2021

Where Has All the Atmosphere Gone? Isotope Ratios and Atmosphere Loss from Mars
April 21, 2021

Supernova Dust in the Solar System
March 24, 2021

Volcanoes, Calderas, and Eruptions: What we Know and What we Don't Know.
February 17, 2021

CRISPR: Rewriting DNA and the Future of Humanity
January 27, 2021

The Science of Climate Change
December 16, 2020

Progress and Pitfalls in Earthquake Prediction and Forecasting
November 18, 2020

The Cassini-Huygens Mission in the Saturn System
October 21, 2020

A Cometary Fossil Inside an Asteroidal Meteorite
September 16, 2020

Videos of the David Taylor Model Basin
August 19, 2020

Science, Politics, and Peace: Antarctica and the International Geophysical Year
June 17, 2020

Cryptography in a Post-Quantum World
May 20, 2020

What's the Matter? My insights on what others seem to have missed about Time & Space (Virtual)
April 15, 2020

Multidisciplinary Aspects of Developing Small Sensing Devices for Monitoring Chemicals and Biochemicals
March 11, 2020

LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Findings So Far, and Current Events
February 19, 2020

Analysis of Organics in Solar System Samples
January 15, 2020

Annual MASPG Holiday Dinner
January 4, 2020

Television in The 1920s
December 18, 2019

Searching for New Worlds with NASA’s Exoplanet Missions
November 20, 2019

Biophysics of Life in Extreme Environments
October 16, 2019

All the Astrolabes
September 25, 2019

Thorium Fuel-Cycle Based Molten Salt Reactor (MSR): Safeguards, Materials and Chemistry
May 15, 2019

The Revised International System of Units
April 17, 2019

IED Countermeasures – Deactivation without Detonation
March 20, 2019

IceCube: Neutrinos at the Bottom of the Earth
February 27, 2019

The Deep Carbon Cycle: Discoveries of the Deep Carbon Observatory
January 16, 2019

Propagation of Ultrashort, Intense Laser Pulses Through the Atmosphere
December 19, 2018

Gravitational Waves and Light from Merging Neutron Stars
November 14, 2018

A Primer on the Physics of Free-Electron Lasers
October 17, 2018

Fermi’s Decade of Observing the Extreme Universe
September 20, 2018

Tour of Montgomery College Planetarium
August 15, 2018

Dynamics of The Supercontinent Rodinia
June 13, 2018

Black Hole Entropy, Entanglement, and Holographic Spacetime
May 16, 2018

Prospects for Life & Human Habitability Around Nearby Stars Many Possible Homes - But the Likely Neighbors Are Microbes
April 25, 2018

The Physics and Photonics of Next Generation Solar Cells
March 28, 2018

Balmer-Dominated Supernova Remnants and the Physics of Collisionless Shocks
February 27, 2018

Fundamental Physics and the Fifth Dimension
January 17, 2018

Future Science, Brilliant Engineering, for the James Webb Space Telescope
December 20, 2017

Primary Frequency References at NIST: Atomic Clocks
November 15, 2017

Peregrinus Versus the Pole Model: The Physics and History of Magnetism
October 18, 2017

Galactic Cosmic Rays: From Earth to Sources
September 20, 2017

Studying Superfluidity with Ultracold Atoms
June 21, 2017

Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST)
May 18, 2017

The Current Experimental Status of the High Tc Problem
April 19, 2017

Why Do Black Holes Shine?
March 8, 2017

A New Look at the TeV Sky with the HAWC Gamma Ray Observatory
February 15, 2017

Probing Physics and Astrophysics with Gravitational Wave Observations
January 18, 2017

The Universe of Gravitational Waves
December 14, 2016

Fusion Energy: Concepts, Progress and Prospects
November 16, 2016

Down-to-Earth Searches for Cosmological Dark Matter
October 19, 2016

Supersymmetry
September 21, 2016

MASPG Tour of the NIST National Center for Neutron Research (NCNR)
August 17, 2016

The Secret Lives of Solar Prominences
June 15, 2016

Tuning Electronic Structure and the Search for New Quantum States
May 18, 2016

Earth’s Changing Sea Ice Coverage and Its Connections with Broader Climate Change and Geoengineering
April 20, 2016

Causes and Consequences of the End-Permian Mass Extinction
March 16, 2016

Neutron-capture Processes in Stars: Theories, Stellar Sites, and Implications from Presolar Grain Studies
February 17, 2016

What Really Sank the Titanic
January 20, 2016

Earths Unique Continents
December 16, 2015

Global Warming 56 Million Years Ago and What It Means for Us
November 17, 2015

The Origin of Titan and Hyperion
October 21, 2015

Elucidating the Role of Network Structure in Gene Regulation: Connecting Models and Data
September 23, 2015

MASPG Tour: National Cryptology Museum
August 19, 2015

The Higgs Boson and Big Science (How Many Physicists Does it take to Discover a New Particle?)
May 20, 2015

Symmetries, Clusters, and Synchronization Patterns in Complex Networks
April 17, 2015

Brilliant Blunders
March 18, 2015

Quantum Entanglement
February 18, 2015

Mapping the Universe (SDSS)
January 21, 2015

Quantum Computer Programming and all that
December 17, 2014

MESSENGER at Mercury: Water, Sulfur and Other Geochemical Surprises from the Innermost Planet
November 19, 2014

Programming Quantum Computers
October 22, 2014

Collisions in Space: The Threat of Asteroid Impacts
September 17, 2014

Laboratory Simulation and Planetary Dynamos
August 27, 2014

Cosmology and the Cosmic Microwave Background
August 4, 2014

Looking at the Sun and Seeing Comets
June 26, 2014

Helioseismology and Asteroseismology: Oscillations from Space
May 28, 2014

Why is the Solar Corona So Hot?
April 16, 2014

The Environmental Dynamics of Human Evolution
March 20, 2014

MESSENGER Views the Geology of Mercury
February 19, 2014

Neutrons at NIST - Past, Present and Future
January 15, 2014

Exoplanet Searches with PFS and APF
December 18, 2013

Our Dynamic Sun
November 20, 2013

The Solar Cycle Conundrum
October 23, 2013

The Atmosphere of the Sun and What Happens in It
September 18, 2013

Visit to Naval Research Laboratory Laser Plasma Branch
August 21, 2013

The Matter of Our Matter: Tales from Nuclear Science
June 19, 2013

How Fusion Can Become Relevant
May 22, 2013

What is Time?
April 24, 2013

The Analysis of Past (Pliocene) Global Climate as an Aid in Understanding Future Climate Change
March 20, 2013

Large Area Telescope on Fermi and Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1) as Contemporaneous All-Sky Monitors
February 20, 2013

Geoneutrinos and heat production in the Earth
January 16, 2013

Observation of Zitterbewegung in a Degenerate Quantum Gas
December 19, 2012

Pictures, Models, Approximations, and Reality: Phase transitions and our understanding of the physical world
November 14, 2012

The Co-evolution of the Geosphere and Biosphere
October 17, 2012

The Planck Constant and the Redefinition of the SI
September 19, 2012

Hyper-Raman Spectroscopy - Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff
June 20, 2012

Ups and Downs of Nuclear Isomers
May 16, 2012

Pick A Snowball Fight: Sulfur and Clumped Isotope Constraints on the Snowball Earth Hypothesis
April 18, 2012

The Physics of Star Formation
March 28, 2012

Statistical Mechanics of Money, Income, Debt, and Energy Consumption
February 22, 2012

Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope: Recent Results
January 25, 2012

Supermassive Black Holes and Precision Cosmology with Megamasers
December 14, 2011

Population and Climate Change: Coupling Human and Nature Models
November 17, 2011

Where did the Galilean Satellites Form?
October 26, 2011

Graphene: deep physics from the all-surface material
June 15, 2011

The Last Endangered Species
May 11, 2011

The LHC: Results from the Energy Frontier
April 19, 2011

The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets
March 16, 2011

Defending Planet Earth from NEOs
February 23, 2011

In the Midst of Chaos, Good Predictions: How we Exploit Chaos to Improve Weather Forecasts
January 19, 2011

Waking Giants: Ice Sheets in a Warming World
November 18, 2010

Sea Ice, Ice Sheets, and the Larger Issue of Global Climate Change
October 20, 2010

September 2010 Triple Event
September 15, 2010

Tour of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD
August 11, 2010

Chaos and the Loss of Predictability of Weather and Climate: Jet Streams, Storms and El-Nino
June 16, 2010

Is God a Mathematician?
May 19, 2010

Energy Efficiency and Use in China and the United States
April 21, 2010

Future Energy Options: Nuclear
March 17, 2010

Chaos and the Loss of Predictability of Weather and Climate: Jet Streams, Storms and El-Nino
February 24, 2010

ARCADE Detection of an Extragalactic Radio Background
January 20, 2010

Holiday Dinner Party
January 9, 2010

Atomic and Molecular Physics for Forefront Astronomy
December 16, 2009

Buried Surprises -- A Paleontologist Tells Tales of the Greatest Impact Crater in the U.S.
November 18, 2009

NRL laser fusion program and perspectives on Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE)
October 21, 2009

CANCELLED: Energy Future: Think Efficiency, a report by the American Physical Society
September 16, 2009

Tour of David Taylor Model Basin
August 20, 2009

Correlations in X-ray Data from Black Holes as a Tool for BH Mass and Distance Measurements
June 17, 2009

Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope: Viewing the Extreme Universe
May 27, 2009

Detecting Neutrinos and WIMPS with IceCube
April 15, 2009

The Pierre Auger Observatory - the study of the highest energy cosmic rays
March 18, 2009

MESSENGER Mission to Mercury: The First Two Flybys
February 19, 2009

Geometric Algebra
January 21, 2009

Warm Weather and Heated Debate: A Short History of Beliefs about Global Warming
December 17, 2008

The End-Pleistocene Extinction Event – What Caused It?
November 19, 2008

Ocean Circulation and Climate
October 15, 2008

Dark Matter or Gravity?
September 17, 2008

U.S. Geological Survey Tour
August 20, 2008

Feynman’s Challenge: Building Things From Atoms – One by One
June 18, 2008

Theory and Experiment in the Quantum-Relativity Revolution
November 14, 2007

Tour of the Radio and Television Museum
October 17, 2007

Reflections on the Anthropic Principle
May 16, 2007

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Technologies
April 18, 2007

Detection of Explosives Using Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance
March 21, 2007

Discussion Forum the IPCC Report: "Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis - Summary for Policy Makers"
February 28, 2007

If You Knew SUSY
January 24, 2007

The Unfinished Story of Black Hole Entropy
December 13, 2006

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (aka Cold Fusion): Problems, Progress and Prospects
November 20, 2006

Progress and Promise in Earthquake Prediction Research
November 15, 2006

Our Home in Space: The Sun-Earth System
October 18, 2006

Event: Tour of NASA-GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center)
August 16, 2006

The DOE Genomics:GTL Program: Systems Microbiology for Bioenergy
May 17, 2006

Two-Day Trip to Philadelphia - 300th Anniversary Celebration of Benjamin Franklin's Birth
April 18-19, 2006

New Results on Black Holes from X-Ray Observatories
March 22, 2006

Magnetic Reconnection: the Mechanism for Dissipating Magnetic Energy in the Universe
February 15, 2006

One Decade in the Life of Einstein: The Impact of 1905-15 on Physics and the Public
December 14, 2005

The Physics of Data Storage
November 16, 2005

Time, Einstein, and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe
October 19, 2005

Asymptotic Freedom and the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics
September 21, 2005

Tour of the National Archives Annex, College Park
August 9, 2005

Advanced Nuclear Reactor Developments
June 22, 2005

Energy Crisis: Mankind's Future After Oil
May 13, 2005

Finding our Origins with the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes
April 21, 2005

Matter, Energy, Space and Time: Particle Physics in the 21st Century
March 16, 2005

Origin of the Continental Crust: A Planetary Perspective
February 16, 2005

Guided Tour of National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport
October 20, 2004

Cosmology from Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
September 22, 2004

Planning Activities

The Planning Group makes the arrangements and plans for the MASPG's future events. It is an informal group that is open to any interested party. In practice, about 12 people have consistently participated. It is chaired by its founder, Richard Strombotne. It meets on the first Wednesday of the month in the fourth floor conference room at the American Center for Physics, College Park, Maryland.