The Future of Life on Earth
My final lecture as Visiting Professor of Cosmology at Gresham college looks at the threats to life on Earth, with a reflection straddling cosmology, astrophysics, history and environmental issues. I argue that what we need to worry about are not the dangers that are out there, but the ones that are in here – inside […]
The Broken Cosmic Distance Ladder
When Albert Einstein tweaked his newl Measuring distances to astronomical objects outside our Galaxy is a surprisingly hard challenge: it wasn’t until 1923 that Edwin Hubble obtained proof that Andromeda is indeed a galaxy in its own right. Today, astronomers extend distance measurements in the cosmos to the edge of the visible Universe, building up […]
Einstein’s Blunder
A lecture given as Visiting Professor of Cosmology at Gresham College, part of the series “The Frontiers of Knowledge” When Albert Einstein tweaked his newly invented equations of General Relativity in 1917, he had one goal in mind: to find a solution that described a closed, static, eternal universe. He therefore minted a new universal […]
Understanding the Universe with AI
A Gresham College lecture as Visiting Professor of Cosmology, part of the series “The Unexpected Universe“. Digital technology from the early 1990s onwards produced an exponential increase in astronomical data. Within our lifetime, the entirety of the visible universe will have been mapped out: we will have seen everything there is to see. The question will then […]
Mysteries of the Dark Cosmos
A Gresham College lecture as Visiting Professor of Cosmology, part of the series “The Nature of Reality“. Dark matter and dark energy together make up 95% of our Universe. Yet, very little is known about them. This lecture will present the endeavours of cosmologists and particle physicists, as they attempt to explain the fundamental nature of these […]
What Has Einstein Ever Done for You?
A Gresham College lecture as Visiting Professor of Cosmology, part of the series “The Nature of Reality“. Albert Einstein’s mind-boggling ideas revolutionized our view of the universe. From relativity to curved spacetime, from the Big Bang to black holes and gravitational waves, nothing could be further from our everyday experience than such esoteric concepts, right? Wrong! This […]
Neutrino: the particle that shouldn’t exist
A Gresham College lecture as Visiting Professor of Cosmology, part of the series “The Unexpected Universe“. In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli did something that “no theorist should ever do”: he invented a new particle that he thought nobody could ever detect in order to save the principle of energy conservation in certain radioactive […]
Weighing the Universe
A public lecture given on Nov 4th 2019 as Visiting Professor of Cosmology at Gresham College, London. Part of a three lecture series in 2019-2020 on “The Nature of Reality”. Surely you can’t “weigh” the Universe?! Let us begin by clarifying the title of this lecture: “weighing” is not quite the right word. In fact, […]
Why Society Needs Astronomy and Cosmology
A public lecture given as Guest Professor at Gresham College London on March 15th 2016. “One day, Sir, you may tax it!” In 1850 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, reportedly visited Michael Faraday’s laboratory at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Faraday’s reputation as one of the greatest scientists of his time was […]
