✨ STARBORN launch events in November! ✨

Posted on Oct 20, 2023 in Creative writing, News, Public lecture, STARBORN
✨ STARBORN launch events in November! ✨

I am thrilled to announce the first launch events for my new book,  STARBORN – How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them). It’s a mix of talks and conversations with amazing scholars, followed by book signing – I look forward to meeting my first readers then! Please do join me […]

An Impossible Dialogue

Posted on Aug 29, 2023 in AI, Art and Science, Creative writing, News, Outreach
An Impossible Dialogue

I am delighted to be involved as scientific consultant in a new play by and with actress and author Diana Höbel. Diana approached me with the idea of creating an “impossible dialogue” between Alma Mahler, a fascinating character and talented musician, and her husband, Gustav Mahler, with whom she had a stormy and ill-fated relationship. […]

The Edge of the Sky | Oir Nan Speur

Posted on Feb 2, 2022 in Art and Science, News, Outreach, The Edge of The Sky

The Edge of the Sky | Oir Nan Speur is a beautiful new ‘analogue theatre show’ in which two astronomers try to unravel a story from the past following a cataclysmic event. It will premiere on February 18th, 2022 at the Hebridean Dark Skies festival, on the Isle of Lewis. Performed in English and Gaelic, it is a uniquely […]

LIBRA: a multi-media theatre play on mega-constellations

Posted on Jul 22, 2021 in Art and Science, News, Outreach
LIBRA: a multi-media theatre play on mega-constellations

It’s 2042: a global corporation has plastered the night sky with internet satellites. Virgil, a middle manager in the company, stumbles on a mysterious pattern hidden in the ads the company runs: could this be linked with the pandemic of compulsive shopping that has struck his own wife? And can a teenage girl with special […]

Uncertain Ruins – From The Big Bang to AI

Posted on Mar 1, 2020 in AI, Art and Science, Machine Learning, News, Outreach, universe

I was invited to contribute a piece responding from the perspective of astrostatistics to the timely and exciting show “Uncertain Ruins”, a “a site-responsive collaboration by artist Julie F Hill and Gauld Architecture that draws on the social, material and historical context of the Swiss Cottage Library in which the gallery is located”, part of the Passen-gers site-specific exhibition […]

Celebrating 70 years of Humanities at Imperial College London

Posted on Feb 20, 2020 in News

Imperial College London is world-renowned for its research and education in science, technology, engineering, maths, medicine and business. It is perhaps less well known that the humanities have a long and fascinating history at Imperial: for 70 years, the arts, humanities and social sciences have enriched the cultural and intellectual life of Imperial’s staff and […]

The Nature of Reality

Posted on Aug 19, 2019 in Gresham College, News, Outreach, Public lecture

FREE LECTURE SERIES 2019-20 The Nature of Reality Roberto Trotta, Visiting Professor of Cosmology All lectures are free on a first-come first served basis, but we can book for schools/ colleges on enquiries@gresham.ac.uk  Monday 4 November 2019, 1pm, Museum of London Weighing the Universe  The cosmic microwave background is the luminous echo of the primordial […]

Today on the ArXiv: How to ride a light beam to the stars, and how not to analyse distance indicators

Posted on Oct 3, 2016 in astro-ph, News, Research, Science

Today on the arXiv, a nice analysis of how to design a solar sail in such a way that the light beam powering it is prevented from rocking it side to side, and hence destabilising it. The key idea is to use a spherical sail (rather than conical designs as previously proposed) and a multi-modal laser […]

Today on the arXiv: from light bulbs to 2 trillion dark matter particles simulations in 75 years

Posted on Sep 29, 2016 in astro-ph, News, Research

Today, Martin White suggests using a density-dependent correlation function as a tool to help distinguish General Relativity from modified gravity theories. The N-body simulation Zurich group shows impressive results from a cosmological simulation involving 2 trillion (2 x 10^12) particles, which they run on the Swiss Supercomputer in Manno using GPU-accelerated nodes, and benchmarked with […]