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.
Inaugural lecture: From the Big Bang to AI
My inaugural lecture as Professor of Astrostatistics at Imperial College London on Jan 15th 2020. A truly unique opportunity for me to sum up what I’ve learnt, from dark matter to Bayes, to the the audience to taste dark matter and feel the dark matter wind (!) and to share the journey. An unforgettable, emotional […]
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 […]
Cosmic Cocktails: Explaining Cosmology with Drinks in the Outer Hebrides
I had the great pleasure of taking the g-Astronomy project to Scotland, on the kind invitation of the Hebridean Dark Skies Festival. One of the events was held at the An Lanntair arts centre, where in collaboration with Kirsty MacKinnon Lease and her team we devised a series of three cocktails to talk about cosmology in a fun, engaging and hopefully entertaining way.
Dining with Copernicus
In Sept 2018, I had the pleasure to be invited to take part to an “immersive dinner experience” organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London. Combining theatre, history, astronomy and cuisine, the evening celebrated in an entertaining manner Polish history and the discoveries of Nicolaus Copernicus. I gave the “Astronomer’s Speech”, on the life […]
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 […]
Uncertain Ruins – From The Big Bang to AI
I was invited to contribute a piece responding from the perspective of astrostatistics to the timely and exciting show “Uncertain Ruins”, a “a site-responsive collaboration by artist Julie F Hill and Gauld Architecture that draws on the social, material and historical context of the Swiss Cottage Library in which the gallery is located”, part of the Passen-gers site-specific exhibition […]
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