By Professor Brad Gibson, Chair, Theoretical Astrophysics Jeremiah Horrocks Institute.
Wednesday 21 November 2012, 7.00pm
Greenbank Lecture Theatre, UCLan
The formation of structure and galaxies throughout the Universe is the driving force behind billion-dollar technological developments such as the Square Kilometer Array, the James Webb Space Telescope, Extremely Large (ground-based) Telescopes, and the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite mission. Professor Gibson will take the audience through a tour of the formation and evolution of both the largest structures in the Universe and those closer to home, in particular our own Milky Way Galaxy. The lecture will highlight in lay-persons’ terms the physics which underpins our understanding of the evolution of galaxies, how that physics gets employed within powerful supercomputers to not only solve astrophysical mysteries, but also those ranging from climate models, to oceanography and geoscience, and medical breakthroughs; ultimately, the lecture will demonstrate where our current work succeeds and, more interestingly, fails, in matching what we actually observe in nature.