Marcia Bartusiak, "Archives of the Universe", Main Tent, Friday 8:00 p.m.; "Einstein's Legacy to Astronomy", Main Tent, Saturday 1:30 p.m.) is an award winning science writer who has combined her training as a journalist with an advanced degree in physics. She has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for more than two decades. Currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has published in a variety of publications, including Science, Smithsonian, Discover, Technology Review, National Geographic, and Astronomy. She is the author of Thursday's Universe, a guide to the frontiers of astrophysics; Through a Universe Darkly, a history of astronomers' quest to discover the universe's composition; and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, a chronicle of the international attempt to detect cosmic gravity waves. Her latest work is Archives of the Universe, an anthology and commentary on the historic discovery papers in astronomy.

From Copernicus and Newton to Penzias and Wilson--these are just a few of the scientific notables that will be discussed by Marcia on Saturday as she reviews some of the greatest discoveries in the history of astronomy. Quoting from the primary documents assembled in her latest book, Archives of the Universe, she will reacquaint us with the words of the astronomers themselves: from Aristotle, proving that the Earth is round, to 20th-century observers forced to acknowledge the existence of black holes, Big Bang radiation, and a bubbly network of galaxies spread throughout the universe.

Most of the great astronomical findings of the 20th century-the expanding universe, compact stars, origin of the Sun's power, black holes, gravitational lensing, dark energy, quasars, gravity waves, the Big Bang, inflation, cosmic acceleration-are rooted in the physics that Einstein so brilliantly deduced. On Friday (Einstein's Legacy To Astronomy), Marcia will provide a guided tour through the cosmos and explain how it was transformed by Einstein's theories of special and general relativity.

www.marciabartusiak.com