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 […]
Vintage 2020: A reflection on the sensual universe that is fading away from us
Originally published in TT JOURNAL, VOL.1, ISSUE 1, 3RD NOVEMBER 2020 September 2020. The bunch of grapes felt surprisingly ponderous as it fell into my cupped hand, released to the tireless pull of gravity with a staccato snap of my shears. The grapes were perfectly formed, with just a hint of velour over their smooth, […]
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 […]
The COVID diaries: Diary of an astrophysicist
We thought we could help. We thought we’d waltz in with a little machine learning magic. We thought we could save the day.
