Nerd Nite: Asteroid Mining And The Big One!

What do you think of when you hear "asteroid mining"? Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler and a soulful Aerosmith soundtrack, right? And when exactly will the "big one," be hitting us poor Pacific Northwesterners, anyway? Join us for this month's Nerd Nite to get the skinny on why asteroid prospecting isn't just the stuff of fiction and whether we should start preparing to dig ourselves out of a giant pile of rubble. 7:30 (Doors open at 6:30) Admission: $5 * Silent, but Deadly: MEGA-earthquakes in Washington * Shelley Chestler, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington The Pacific Northwest is due for a gigantic earthquake sometime in the next 200 years. Are we in trouble? How big will it be? Unfortunately we don't know as much about this upcoming earthquake as we would like to. Luckily there is another type of earthquake, called a slow earthquake. These earthquakes happen all the time, but we can't feel them! These slow earthquakes have the potential to give us new information that can help us determine the size of the next "big one." Shelley Chestler is a third year graduate student in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington. She studies a type of earthquake that is so slow, that we can't feel it! When she is not studying earthquakes she likes running, playing board games, and hanging out with her dog, Harper. * No, Bruce Willis is not our boss...* Krunal Desai & Caitlin O'Keefe, Planetary Resources Local Asteroid Mining company (yes you red that right) will present their audacious mission to send robots into outer space to prospect for and mine valuable resources from asteroids in our Solar System (yes you read that right too). Hear Director of Marketing Caitlin O’Keefe and Krunal Desai, Avionics Engineer, discuss the team and tech behind these advanced spacecraft that are being built right here in Redmond, WA, and let them convince you that what may seem sci-fi is happening today.