Gravitational Waves, Dark Energy and Black Holes

What are stars? How do they evolve and die? Why do we need general relativity to describe their behaviour? What are black holes? What is the astronomical evidence for their existence? What are gravitational waves? Can wormholes in space-time exist? Is the film interstellar feasible? All these questions and more were answered in Professor Longair’s […]

Periodic Success

Dr Jamie Gallagher https://www.jamiebgall.co.uk/ https://twitter.com/JamieBGall?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-gallagher-8b82676b/?originalSubdomain=uk The periodic table has been an emblem of science for over 150 years. Behind this iconic classroom poster live tales of romance, murder, greed and wonder. Which element will make you reek of garlic? Why do we love gold? And what is the disgusting secret of antimony? Material scientist […]

Mars Missions 2021: Early Discoveries

Professor Andrew Coates Three new missions arrived at Mars in February 2021, to look at weather, water and life. This lecture looked at new results from the UAE’s Hope mission, China’s Tianwen-1 and NASA’s Perseverance. It also looked at the prospects for the ESA-Russia Rosalind Franklin rover to be launched next year arriving on 10 […]

Putting the Science into Stargazing!

https://www.roe.ac.uk/~vidmar/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/matjazvidmar/?originalSubdomain=uk Matjaz Vidmar A beginner’s guide to the night sky, including a round-up of recent astronomical news and the science of celestial sights.

Mathematical Journeys into Fictional Worlds

Professor Sarah Hart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_B._Hart Sarah B. Hart is a British mathematician specialising in group theory. She is a professor of mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London and the Head of Mathematics and Statistics at Birkbeck. https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8004985/sarah-hart https://www.gresham.ac.uk/professors-and-speakers/professor-sarah-hart/ https://twitter.com/sarahlovesmaths?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Sarah Hart is the first woman Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, and was appointed in 2020. […]

An atmospheric science – a high flying career

Dr Andrew Kaye https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Dr-Andrew-Kaye.aspx# As an atmospheric scientist Dr Kaye was lucky enough to spend nearly 10 year of his career as a Civilian Flight Test Observer with the Royal Air Force, managing access to the Met. Office C-130 flying laboratory. His experiments ranged from Cloud Physics through Atmospheric Chemistry to remote sensing. Dr Kaye […]

Teeth and titanium

Dr Craig Kennett for IOP London and South East Branch Teeth, titanium, lasers and scanning technology: how the application of Physics has helped to shape modern day Dentistry. In this talk, Dr Kennett gave an overview of how he uses different technologies in the treatment and reconstruction of people’s dentition to improve Dental health, function […]

The Astronomer and the Witch: Kepler’s Mother

Professor Ulinka Rublack FBA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulinka_Rublack https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/professor-ulinka-rublack-fba https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/professor-ulinka-rublack In 1615 Katharina Kepler, illiterate mother of the astronomer Johannes Kepler, was accused of being a witch. At that time in Germany, there was a witch ‘craze’. Over half of the c.50,000 executions in Europe for witchcraft between 1500 and 1700 took place in Germany. During the next […]

Caroline Herschel: Discoverer of Comets

Dr Sheila Kanani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Kanani Sheila Pearson (née Kanani), commonly known as Sheila Kanani is a British astronomer and the Education, Outreach and Diversity Officer at the Royal Astronomical Society. https://twitter.com/SaturnSheila?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://ras.ac.uk/user/education-outreach/sheila-kanani https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sheila-kanani-b9942a1/?originalSubdomain=uk Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) was the first woman professional astronomer, and by the time of her death she had been awarded the Royal […]

Countdown to Launch

Dr Olivia Jones https://www.roe.ac.uk/~ojones/ 2021 is an exciting year for astronomy, with the launch of the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). Webb, NASA’s and ESA’s flagship mission, will revolutionise astronomy. It will be the largest and most powerful telescope launched into space, and it has strong Scottish connections with one of the key […]