Date: Wednesday, Oct 24
Time: 8pm
Location: High Noon Saloon (map)

The order of the night’s line-up will be announced on the Facebook event the day of the show.

Ghost Particles and other ~Tales from the Ice~

Summary: Learn about the elusive neutrino and the ambitious project decades in the making that made capturing one a reality: IceCube, a cubic kilometer detector frozen under the ice at the South Pole. Neutrinos can escape from the most violent astrophysical sources in distant corners of the universe and reach us here on Earth. These sources could include exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and highly energetic blazars. Harnessing the power of the neutrino can provide answers to some of the most pressing questions facing astrophysics today. What’s a blazar? What does it take to do science in one of the harshest climates on Earth? What antediluvian horrors did we unearth during construction? Come find out.

Zach Griffith

Presenter Bio: Zach is a PhD Candidate in astroparticle physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While Zach mainly uses IceCube to look for very high energy photons, he hasn’t been very successful, and will focus on the cool stuff tonight. Outside of research, he enjoys contributing to open-source software, good coffee, good coffee stouts, and afternoons of galactic conquest playing Twilight Imperium.

How a Microscope Will Save The World… and perhaps ruin a person

Summary: Rob will show you what a very special microscope can do to improve the world and recount his travel around the world promoting the technology that will make him a better person (if it doesn’t ruin him).

Rob Ulfrig

Presenter Bio: Rob has been working with Atom Probe Microscopes at CAMECA in Madison since 2001 improving the hardware and software for the Local Electrode Atom Probe Microscope. He now works as a Product Manager – integrating the activities and requests from internal and external customers into the latest and greatest of CAMECA’s software and hardware. Rob graduated from The University of Wisconsin-Madison with Materials Science, Nuclear Engineering, and Engineering Physics degrees.

The Irregulars: How Women Soldiers Found Their Own Freedom in the American Civil War

Summary: Viewed at the time (and even still) largely as rare curiosities at best and disgraced deviants at worst, hundreds of women were documented to have passed as men and joined up, North and South, to participate in the American Civil War. How did they do it? Why did they do it? From spies, drummers, soldiers, scouts, nurses, and more, women joined and served for a wide variety of reasons, and with varying degrees of success. One was only discovered once she gave birth in camp. Another immediately gave it away by trying to put on trousers like a dress. Still more served with distinction, died of wounds and illness, or even lived out the rest of their lives in their male identities before being discovered by the doctor at their veteran’s home.

Learn a few of their stories (including some of the tricks of the trade, as told/lived by the younger, Civil War reenactor self of your presenter), and why their very lives and legacies helped pave the way for women’s rights–without waiting for anyone’s permission.

Emily Mills

Presenter Bio: Emily is a lifelong queer nerd, history geek, and former Civil War reenactor. She’s currently the Editor of Our Lives, the LGBTQ magazine out of Madison, as well as General Manager of Madison Roller Derby (formerly known as Mad Rollin’ Dolls). You may know her from such queer feminist trash rock duos as Damsel Trash, for which she plays the drums and screams.

Emily is about to finish (and hopes to publish in some form) a novel that’s a fictionalized account of a young woman who dressed as a man to serve with the Union Army during the Civil War. Yeah, she’s kinda super into this shit.

You can find her on Twitter and elsewhere @millbot, or at emilymills.org.