The RAS hosts popular 45-minute lunchtime lectures for non-specialists. Members of the public can listen to leading scientists talk about their work, in Burlington House starting at 1pm.
Date: 14 Feb 2012
Time: 13:00
A public lecture by Professor Paul Crowther
Stars come in all manner of sizes, named dwarfs, giants and supergiants. The smallest would fit within the M25, while the largest would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn if relocated to the centre of our Solar System.
Stars also possess various colours, from blue, through yellow and orange to red, indicating a range of surface temperatures which extend up to a hundred thousand degrees in some cases.
It is however the mass of a star that dictates how long it will live for and how it will die.
This lecture will introduce different types of star, before focusing on the search for the most massive, so-called "monster stars" in the Universe, which shine up to ten million times brighter than our Sun, albeit only for a few million years.
Professor Paul Crowther is an observational astronomer, and is also interested in UK science policy. He is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield. He has a BSc in Maths and Astronomy and a PhD in Astrophysics, both achieved at UCL.
Date: 13 Mar 2012
Time: 13:00
A public lecture by Dr Ian Crawford.
This talk will discuss the long-term evolution of the Sun and its effect on the future habitability of the Solar System. Once the Sun becomes a red giant star in about 6 billion years time, and probably well before, life on Earth will become impossible. On the otherhand, Mars and the icy moons of the outer solar system will become more habitable, albeit relatively briefly. Meanwhile, on a similar timescale, the Solar System will witness a colision between our galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy, the likely consequences of which will also be discussed.
Ian Crawford is a Reader in Planetary Science and Astrobiology at Birkbeck College London and currently Senior Secretary of the RAS.
Date: 17 Apr 2012
Time: 13:00
***PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS PUBLIC LECTURE DOES NOT FOLLOW THE USUAL DATE PATTERN***
A public lecture by Professor Malcolm Coe
Tides operate at many levels – from the beach where you take your holiday, to interactions between the most massive structures in the universe. Such large scale interactions between galaxies can sometimes trigger huge waves of starbirth, producing large numbers of massive stars and their evolved products – neutron stars and black holes.
This talk will describe why we believe such an event took place 200 million years ago in the Small Magellanic Cloud (a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way), and how X-ray telescopes are now discovering a huge nest of neutron stars produced from those tidal interactions.
Along the way we will look at the observational history of the SMC from the first drawings by John Herschel done in Cape Town, to a massive X-ray survey just completed last year.
Professor Malcolm Coe trained as an astronomer at Imperial College, London University before moving to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Washington DC for several years. At NASA, and since, he worked with space-based telescopes to investigate the Universe at extreme temperatures and gravities, exploring the boundaries of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Since 1980 he has been a member of staff at Southampton University.
Date: 8 May 2012
Time: 13:00
A public lecture by Dr Simon Mitton
The German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger rated the question “Why is there something rather than nothing” as the most fundamental issue in philosophy. There is a cosmological variant of this question of existence: “Why is there structure in the universe and from what does it arise?”
This conundrum is central to the history of cosmology, and the search for the answer has been a prime mover in leading us successively to the discovery of the Big Bang, hidden dark matter and mysterious dark energy.
This non-technical public lecture reviews the history of attempts to understand the mechanics and structure of the universe from antiquity to the present. The talk will recount the astonishing progress of understanding the origin, evolution, and architecture of the universe.
Dr Simon Mitton is a Fellow of St Edmund's College who has written widely on astronomy and cosmology. He is the biographer of the famous Cambridge cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle. He recently completed a book on the history of attempts to understand why the universe has structure, and this will be published by Princeton University Press in autumn 2011.
Date: 12 Jun 2012
Time: 13:00
A public lecture by Dr Chris Arridge
The worlds of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are full of superlatives. Apart from the Sun they are the largest and most massive objects in our solar system and their influence is felt over enormous distances.
The stunning rings around Saturn and the large number of moons around most of the giant planets lead some people to think of them as miniature solar systems in their own right. Giant planets also have intense magnetic fields and are highly efficient charged particle accelerators which results in spectacular aurorae (northern lights).
This talk will take you on a cruise of the giant planets where we’ll explore some of the puzzles currently being addressed by planetary scientists in the UK and beyond. The talk will conclude with an overview of upcoming space missions to the outer planets.
Dr Chris Arridge is a planetary scientist at Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London. His work is focused on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and on future missions to the outer planets.
