Asteroid Adventures

Asteroids were for years considered ‘celestial vermin’ – objects which got in the way of more interesting fodder for astronomers. Now, they are central to our Solar System’s story, the building blocks from which planets are made, and capable of telling us the history of the last five billion years. This lecture considered two missions […]

The Biggest Cosmic Map

Mapping the stars is, perhaps, the oldest of astronomical pursuits, but it has been perfected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. The exquisitely precise map it provides shows the positions and movements of the nearest two billion stars. Starting with a history of mapping the cosmos, this lecture outlined the new and dynamic history […]

Come With Me Inside a Black Hole

What happens if you fall into a black hole? In this mind-expanding lecture, Carlo Rovelli, world-renowned physicist and bestselling author, took us on a journey inside a black hole—exploring time dilation, the warping of space, and the potential for black holes to transform into white holes. From Einstein’s equations to the cutting edge of quantum […]

Touching the Sun

Despite its familiarity, the Sun is a very different presence from the friendly yellow circle in children’s paintings. Our star is a broiling mass of plasma, with its powerful magnetic fields, twisted by its rotation, capable of producing dramatic events of spectacular beauty and power. Using results from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe – the fastest […]

Black Holes and Bangs

Space itself is wobbly. We exist on a choppy sea, its surface roiled by disturbances caused by the movements of black holes hundreds of millions of light-years away. The recent detection of these ‘gravitational waves’ by a completely novel type of observatory is a story of scientific persistence and precision engineering, resulting in a completely […]

The Naked Scientists-June 2012

The first lecture was given by Dr Dominic Ford from The Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. The lecture was about the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and what radio astronomy reveals about the universe. The Square Kilometre Array is expected to take 5 years to be built with initial observations expected in 2019. The array will be […]

The Naked Scientists-June 2012

Introduction The Naked Scientists are a media-savvy group of physicians and researchers from Cambridge University who use radio, live lectures, and the Internet to strip science down to its bare essentials, and promote it to the general public. Their award winning BBC weekly radio programme, The Naked Scientists, reaches a potential audience of 6 million […]

Rugby 2012

After an excellent lunch (but no chocolate in the pudding) I attended a workshop entitled “Spicing up your particle physics teaching” given by Graham Bone, Exeter school. I won’t bore you with what I did but it gave me a lot of good ideas to help me teach my year 13s next year. The final […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2012

The final lecture of the day was on dark matter. Unfortunately I don’t have many pictures from this as my camera needed recharging. The lecturer was Dr Pawel Majewski. For further information click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter Dark matter is mass that cannot be seen that seems to affect matter. Gravitational lensing involve gravitational fields bending the […]

Particle Physics Masterclass 2012

Particle Physics Masterclass Every year various colleges and research establishments put on Particle Physics Masterclasses and this year Rooksheath Year 13s were privileged to be able to attend the Particle Physics Masterclass at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory on the 15th of March. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is near Didcot in Oxfordshire and supports research in areas […]