In December 2020 the Hayabusa2 spacecraft brought back samples from the asteroid Ryugu for scientists to study on Earth. What exactly is an asteroid? How did Hayabusa2 get there? What can we learn from Ryugu? Science communicator at the Natural History Museum in London, Khalil Thirlaway, was in conversation with curator Helena Bates of the […]

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Professor Roberto Trotta Roberto Trotta is Visiting Gresham Professor of Cosmology and Professor of Astrostatistics at Imperial College, London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrostatistics Astrostatistics is a discipline which spans astrophysics, statistical analysis and data mining. It is used to process the vast amount of data produced by automated scanning of the cosmos, to characterize complex datasets, and to […]

Read more "Neutrino: The Particle that Shouldn’t Exist"

Dr Mark Lewney http://www.doctorlewney.com/ https://twitter.com/doctorlewney?lang=en Dr Lewney is known as the guitar physicist. One of his previous talks was called “Where physics and guitars collide” and the video link is below https://www.youtube.com/watch/fjKugarLN-s He won the first ever Fame Lab Competition and he does a lot of science and maths talks across the UK. Why aren’t […]

Read more "The future ain’t what it used to be"

Dr. Xin Ran Liu https://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/people/xinran-liu Email: x.liu@ed.ac.uk https://twitter.com/xinranliu_1?lang=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78WmmFG_kbA https://stfc.ukri.org/news-events-and-publications/features/the-story-of-dark-matter/ Dr Liu started his talk with a video (link below) https://youtu.be/xcZjpAaZREo The video was produced by the dark matter UK collaboration and the screenshot, above, shows all the research groups involved. A summary of the video Everything is made up of tiny particles of matter. […]

Read more "Searching in the dark"

Dr Clara Barker Dr Clara Barker discussed her research and the challenges that physics and physicists face, and shared some of her work to push for change. https://edu.admin.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-clara-barker clara.barker@materials.ox.ac.uk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barker https://twitter.com/ClaraMBarker?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor http://users.ox.ac.uk/~engs1643/member_clara_barker.html Clara Michelle Barker is a British engineer and material scientist. In 2017 she received the Points of Light award from the UK Prime […]

Read more "Challenges & Changes in Physics"

Dr Preeti Kaur preeti.kaur@stfc.ac.uk https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Resources-for-Schools.aspx?utm_source=ISIS&utm_medium=Homepage&utm_campaign=Resources%20for%20Schools Dr Kaur works at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and part of her talk involved a short tour of the facility ISIS ISIS 360 Tour (stfc.ac.uk) https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/OtherFiles/Interactive%20Tour%20of%20ISIS.zip https://vimeo.com/7813721 https://youtu.be/1mpOm6LIzH4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIS_Neutron_and_Muon_Source The ISIS Neutron and Muon Source is a pulsed neutron and muon source, established 1984 at the Rutherford Appleton […]

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Dr Kristian Harder https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristian-harder-09894563?originalSubdomain=uk https://www.ppd.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Kristian-Harder.aspx kristian.harder@stfc.ac.uk https://twitter.com/harderkristian?lang=en https://particlen13.imascientist.org.uk/profile/kristianharder/ Kristian Harder is an expert in electronics infrastructure, developing firmware and software for system integration and testing. He is the work package co-manager of the CMS-UK Phase 2 upgrade common technology platform, and a member of the CMS-UK upgrade project office. He is a particle physicist at […]

Read more "What is science"

Dr. Jessica Barnes, University of Arizona 8th December 2020 Lunar samples are a touchstone to understanding how our nearest neighbour formed and evolved. Advancements in laboratory instrumentation and techniques are providing new and more precise data on lunar materials that are challenging the Apollo-era paradigm of a ‘bone-dry Moon’. In preparation for future lunar missions […]

Read more "The Moon’s water: past, current, and future perspectives"

Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell Department of Physics, University of Oxford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS FRSE FRAS FInstP (/bɜːrˈnɛl/; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating compact star (usually […]

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Professor Bill Murray https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/staff/academic/billmurray/ bill.murray@stfc.ac.uk Professor Murray is a joint academic with Warwick University. He was the ATLAS Higgs Convener in the run-up to Higgs discovery 2012 and then Physics Coordinator. More recently he has coordinated the ATLAS Tracking in Dense Environments group and is currently Higgs and Diboson Searches Convener. He also engages with […]

Read more "The Higgs Boson: So, what?"