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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 […]

Einstein’s Blunder

Posted on Jan 3, 2022 in Gresham College, Outreach, Public lecture, Science, Teaching
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?

Posted on Aug 27, 2021 in Outreach, universe

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

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 […]

Space Sounds: The Music of the Cosmos

Posted on May 28, 2021 in Gresham College, Outreach, Public lecture, Science, universe

A Gresham College lecture as Visiting Professor of Cosmology, part of the series “The Unexpected Universe“. “In space, no one can hear you scream”. The chillingly accurate tagline of Ridley Scott’s 1979 space horror classic, Alien, is often belied in science fiction movies, forgetting that in space there is no air, and hence no sound. Space today […]

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

Posted on Mar 2, 2021 in Gresham College, Outreach, Public lecture, Science, universe

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?

Posted on Feb 15, 2021 in Gresham College, Outreach, Public lecture, Science

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

Posted on Feb 2, 2021 in Gresham College, Outreach, Public lecture, Science

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 […]