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 Love Makers
How artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire: a philosophical thriller and essays. I’m thrilled that this wonderful book by Aifric Campbell, including fiction and non-fiction writing, has been published by MIT press. A chance encounter between two women and a road trip into the future: It’s Christmas Eve, and […]
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 […]
Picturing the Invisible
Exploring interdisciplinary synergies from the arts and the sciences. I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to this cross-disciplinary group, and the ensuing book that’s now been published by UCL Press (Open access download here). Picturing the Invisible presents different disciplinary approaches to articulating the invisible, that which is not known or that which […]
The Edge of the Sky | Oir Nan Speur
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 […]
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 […]
Can UFOs visit us?
A few years back, I helped Dallas Campbell in his BBC Sky at Night investigation, trying to find out whether UFOs could be alien visitors… See the clip by clicking on the link below. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02jj121/player
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 […]
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 […]
