The Nature of Reality
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
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
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 […]
14 yr old aspiring writer wins #upgoer5 Mr Santa competition!
In the run-up to Christmas and in collaboration with Imperial Fringe, I set up a competition for the best letter to Mr Santa written using only the most common 1,000 words in English, the idea behind my book, “The Edge of the Sky”. Among many excellent entries, one stood out: It was inspired, poetic and […]
Flux Dance Theatre: Weaving science into dance
I was very pleased to be able to facilitate the participation of Flux Youth Theatre to last May’s Imperial Festival, the youth company of the innovative Flux Dance Theatre. Ran by two energetic and dynamic dancers, Charlotte Hale and Emma Dodds, Flux Dance Theatre focuses on science and how to weave it into dance and […]
The Hands-On Universe public engagement programme
Cosmology and astrophysics address some of the most fundamental and universally fascinating questions in the whole of science: Where did the Universe come from? What is it made of? What will its ultimate fate be? The study of the Universe is inspiring, humbling and in short one of the greatest scientific challenges of humankind. But by […]
