Eruptions at the Sun eject huge clouds of magnetised gas and highly energetic particles into space. As a result, when Earth is in the way, we may experience Space Weather. Join Silvia Dalla to find out how Solar Energetic Particles released during solar eruptions affect our space environment and how forecasts of radiation storms be generated.

Professor of Solar Physics at the University’s Jeremiah Horrocks Institute

Professor Dalla joined us in 2007 after working as a postdoc at Imperial College London and the University of Manchester. Professor Dalla uses data from spacecraft and numerical models to study how energetic particles from the Sun propagate through space.

On the 13th April 1970, when the spacecraft Apollo 13 was over 200,000 miles from Earth heading towards the Moon, a catastrophic failure occurred. There followed a chain of events which set off the greatest rescue ever attempted in the history of mankind. In “Apollo 13: Lucky for Some?” Dr Kevin Bowman takes you back in time as you learn what really happened and why. You encounter the scientists and engineers who designed and built the spacecraft, as both humans and machine are pushed to their limits. With every decision becoming a matter of life or death, you will discover how Mission Control put together a plan in a desperate attempt to save the lives of the crew of Apollo 13.

Neutrinos are the most abundant massive particles in the universe, but they possess an ethereal nature that makes it notoriously difficult to detect them. Their properties allow us to probe new physics that might unravel the nature of dark matter and account for the observed matter–antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. In this talk, Professor Costas Andreopoulos will describe the nature of the neutrino and review the fascinating experiments and long-standing experimental anomalies that led to the discovery and present understanding of neutrino oscillations. He will summarise the extraordinary new experiments currently under construction that, we hope, will cast ample new light on the neutrino over the next two decades.

Professor Costas Andreopoulos holds a Chair in Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Liverpool and has been working on accelerator-based neutrino physics for the past 25 years. He is a co-recipient (with the T2Kcollaboraion) of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

The question about the origin of planets and life has fascinated humankind since ancient times. Until two decades ago we just knew the planets in our Solar System. Since then thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars. To our surprise these “exoplanets” have properties that are very different from those of the planets of our Solar System, thus challenging our understanding of how planets form. Recent observations suggest that planets and planetary systems may form much faster than it has been previously thought. I will discuss the methods for discovering exoplanets and present radiative hydrodynamic computational models of the process of planet formation in protostellar discs around young stars.

Dr Stamatellos received his BSc in Physics from the University of Athens, Greece, his MSc in Space Physics and Astronomy from Rice University, USA, and in 2004 he was awarded a PhD degree in Astrophysics from Cardiff University, UK. He worked at Cardiff University as a Research Associate until 2013. Since then he is at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, initially as a Guild Research Fellow, and since 2018 as a Reader. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Theoretical Astronomy and Astrophysics Laboratory, Nagoya University (2014-2016). His work is mainly theoretical and computational, focusing on the study of the earliest stages of star and planet formation. He has published more than 50 refereed articles and is well known for his research on planet formation by gravitational instability. Dr Stamatellos has established collaborations with East Asia countries (China, Japan, S. Korea) and he has been working on the development of Astronomy in Vietnam.

In recent years it has become possible to study millions or even billions of individual stars within our Milky Way galaxy, and hence to determine how it formed in exquisite detail.But our Universe contains hundreds of billions of other galaxies, all but a handful of which are far too distant to individually examine their stars. Is it possible for us to learn how they formed or acquired their stars with similar detail?In this talk I will describe how the combination of computer simulations, large surveys using state-of-the-art spectrographs, and a few bright ideas are allowing us to pick apart the light of galaxies to work out how and when their stars were formed. In the process we are uncovering the ghosts of the dozens or hundreds of former galaxies that were destroyed to produce the surviving galaxies we see today.

Dr Mark Norris graduated from Durham University with a MSci in Physics in 2004, followed by a PhD in Astrophysics in 2008. Between 2008 and 2015 he conducted research into the formation of galaxies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg Germany as a postdoctoral scholar. In 2015 Mark joined UCLan as a Lecturer in Astronomy, teaching undergraduate on-campus and distance learning course related to Astronomy. He is responsible for the running of UCLan’s Alston Observatory.

Simplicity, elegance and beauty have long played an important role in the development of theoretical physics. Such considerations have not only deepened our understanding, but have in many instances led to concrete predictions which were verified by experiments. A central theme is the unification of the laws of fundamental physics, a program which has culminated in String Theory in recent years. After an historical overview enriched by examples, I will discuss the motivations for String Theory, its status, and its role in modern theoretical physics.

Andreas Braun is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics, Durham University. Prior to moving to Durham, he has held research positions in Vienna, Tokyo, London and Oxford. His research is concerned with geometrical aspects of theoretical physics, in particular string theory, and crosses the boundaries between theoretical physics and mathematics.

In a journey that has stretched from the coastline of Namibia to the steamy jungles of Ghana, across crocodile infested lakes and the deserts of Northern Kenya, the cliff-side dwellings of the Dogon in Mali and onto the mysterious archaeological sites of the Egyptian Sahara, this lecture explores Africa’s ancient astronomical history. By shedding new light on traditional African astronomy, and in turn global understanding of the world’s oldest science, acclaimed African astronomer, Dr Thebe Medupe of the South African Astronomical Observatory, will look at celestial beliefs from different parts of the African continent and how some of these ancient African perceptions link with current scientific knowledge.

Professor Thebe Medupe grew up in a poor South African village near Mafikeng, about four hours north-west of Johannesburg. He went on to gain a doctorate in astrophysics at the University of Cape Town, and was presenter and associate producer of “Cosmic Africa”, a feature documentary about traditional African astronomy released in 2002. He is a researcher at the South African Astronomical Observatory, where he is participating in a programme to encourage black South Africans to take up astronomy. He is writing a book, in the Setswana language, on ethno-astronomy”.

Professor Richard Nelson will describe the methods used by astronomers to discover exoplanets, what we know about the exoplanet population and how our ideas about planetary system formation have evolved in recent years.

Professor Richard Nelson is an expert on the discovery of exoplanets, and is the head of QMUL’s Astronomy Unit based at the School of Physics and Astronomy. Here he talks about how planets form and how astronomers have contributed to society.

In this talk, Chris Lintott will draw on cutting-edge research and results from his own Galaxy Zoo project to compare the Milky Way to the other galaxies which surround us, and ask whether we’re living in a special time in its history.

Dr Chris Lintott is a researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. He is principal investigator for the Zooniverse citizen science platform, the world’s largest and most successful set of scientific crowd-sourcing projects.

A passionate advocate for the public understanding of science, Dr Lintott is best known as co-presenter of the BBC’s long-running ‘Sky at Night’

Cosmology confronts some of the most fundamental questions in science. How and when did our universe begin? What is it made of? How did galaxies and other structures form? There has been enormous progress in the past few decades towards answering these questions.

Professor Carlos S. Frenk is Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University’s world-renowned theoretical cosmology research group. Along with collaborators from all over the world, he builds model universes in state-of-the-art supercomputers, trying to understand how the structures in our Universe evolved from simple beginnings to the complex structures composed of stars and galaxies that we see today.

In the talk, it will be discussed how humans conceived such a mechanism and how they managed to construct a mechanical cosmos based on causality, the notion of laws of physics, and modelling.

Professor Xenophon Moussas, is one of the protagonists of the study of the oldest known computer and clockwork cosmos of the 2nd centyry BC, the Antikythera Mechanism. A space physicist, with research interests including space and solar physics, planetology, Ulysses mission, WIND/WAVES and STEREO space mission, Solar Orbiter.

Lancashire has an extremely rich and distinguished astronomical history, from men who first advanced the work of Kepler and Galileo to cutting-edge modern astrophysics. Astronomical societies of international importance have flourished in the county since 1881, including that of Preston, which not only advanced original observational work but also pioneered astronomical public education and outreach.

Allan Chapman is a Lancastrian from Swinton and Pendlebury, Salford. He left a “tough” secondary modern school at 16 and worked full time for 7 years, gaining ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels at night school. He entered Lancaster University in 1969 and took a first in history, going on to Oxford to do his doctorate, where he still is. He has had a passion for both science and history since childhood, and in particular, with the work of the “Three North country Astronomers”. In 2014, he was “Outstanding Alumnus” of Lancaster University and the 2015 Jackson-Gwilt Medallist of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is just completing his 11th book, his previous one of which had chapters on the “Northcountry Astronomers” and their world: this was ‘Stargazers: Copernicus, Galileo, the telescope and the Church. The Astronomical Renaissance, 1500-1700.’ (Lion Books, 2014). He is also active in the relationship between science and Christianity, and still makes regular visits to his old Church and community in Swinton and Pendlebury. in 2004, Allan was very honoured when UCLan gave him an honorary doctorate.

The popular notion of a black hole “sucking in everything” from its surroundings only happens very close to a black hole. Far away, the pull of the black hole is identical to that of anything else of the same mass. However, black holes do give rise to many remarkable phenomena such as extragalactic quasars and, in our own Galaxy, microquasars. This is because gravity is not the only law of physics that must be obeyed. Matter can be spun off from near black holes in the form of winds and jets that spread through their surroundings and thus cause black holes to have tremendous cosmic influence many light years beyond their event horizons. I will describe various approaches that I employ to investigate these phenomena, and their spin-offs.

Katherine Blundell is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at St John’s College.

We will explain the concept of the expanding universe – what exactly is expanding? – and the modern evidence for it. This will reveal a number of unexpected connections between the size and age of the universe and the conditions needed for life to exist and persist within it. We will meet the idea that an inflationary surge in expansion rate of the universe occurred in the distant past and see the powerful evidence that this happened. This will provoke us to take seriously the idea that we are part of a multiverse of universes, each with different properties, and that our observable universe might have a beginning whilst the multiverse does not. Finally, we will see what the observed acceleration of our universe’s expansion today signals about its far future. It may well be that astronomers in the far future will not be able to study the universe by direct observation like we do today.

John D. Barrow FRS is Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University and Director of the Millennium Mathematics Project, a programme to improve the appreciation of mathematics amongst young people and the general public. He is a Fellow, and former vice-president, of Clare Hall, Cambridge. His research interests are in cosmology, astrophysics and gravitation. He has received many awards, including the 2006 Templeton Prize, the Royal Society’s 2008 Faraday Prize, the 2012 Zeeman Medal of the London Mathematical Society, the 2009 Kelvin Medal and the 2015 Dirac Gold Medal of the Institute of Physics, and the 2016 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academia Europaea. He has written more than 540 scientific papers, and 22 books translated into 28 languages; including recently, The Book of Universes. His play, Infinities, won the Premi Ubu for best play in the Italian theatre in 2002 and the 2003 Italgas Prize. He was Gresham Professor of Astronomy from 2003-7, and Professor of Geometry, 2008-11. John Barrow also has the curious distinction of having delivered lectures on cosmology at the Venice Film Festival, 10 Downing Street, Windsor Castle and the Vatican Palace.

On July 20th 1969, one of the greatest feats ever achieved by the human race was accomplished, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the Moon. By doing so they became the first humans to walk on a celestial body other than planet Earth.

To mark the 50th Anniversary of this incredible event, the JHI is showcasing a celebratory evening in which you are invited to experience (or relive for those old enough to remember) the sights and times of those days as well as other things “moon related”.

At the centre of the evening is the show “Rocket to the Moon”, in which Dr Kevin Bowman explains what it was like to live through those exciting times. As the race to the moon is brought to life, you will meet the mighty Saturn V rocket, as you become an Apollo astronaut and embark on your own epic voyage to land on the moon. See the experience unfold before you on a giant two storey screen and full surround sound.

A black hole is an extreme region of space that contains so much matter in such a small region that it curves the very essence of space itself. The speed needed to escape from a black hole is greater than the speed of light, so once something has fallen into a black hole it can never get out, because nothing travels faster than light.

This talk will describe how, for the first time ever, we took an actual picture of a black hole – something that was thought to be in the realms of science fiction only a few years ago. This is because a black hole doesn’t emit any light or reflect any light.

But now the event horizon around a black hole has been imaged – the last place from which light can escape. This was made possible by connecting together 8 different telescopes across the earth to make the equivalent of one single earth-sized telescope. It is so powerful that it could resolve an object only a few centimetres across on the surface of the Moon.

The black hole imaged is the size of our entire solar system – except that it is 55 million light years away. One of the 8 telescopes is the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, which is part-owned by the University of Central Lancashire, and Professor Derek Ward-Thompson has worked on the imaging team to make the picture.

Derek teaches across a rage of subjects in Physics and Astrophysics. His particular expertise lies in the fields of star and planet formation, as well as interstellar magnetic fields, from the most diffuse regions of space to the dense environments around the event horizons of black holes. He is part of the ‘Event Horizon Telescope Consortium’, which published the first ever image of a black hole in April 2019.

110 times wider than Earth; 15 million degrees at its core; an atmosphere so huge that Earth is actually within it: come and meet the star of our solar system.

Light takes eight minutes to reach Earth from the surface of the Sun. But its journey within the Sun takes hundreds of thousands of years. What is going on in there? What are light and heat? How does the Sun produce them and how on earth did scientists discover this? Join Lucie Green for an enlightening talk, taking you from inside the Sun to its surface and to Earth, to discover how the Sun works, how a solar storm can threaten the modern technology that society relies on and more of the latest research in solar physics.

Lucie is a Professor of Physics and a Royal Society University Research Fellow based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL’s Department of Space and Climate Physics and studies activity in the atmosphere of our nearest star, the Sun. In particular, looking at immense magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere which sporadically erupt into the Solar System. If these eruptions reach the Earth they can drive major space weather events. She is interested in how the magnetic configuration of the eruptions relates to geomagnetic activity and what this means for those living in the UK.

Gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of spacetime — were one of the first major predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity, and are the last to be directly measured. These waves are produced by some of the most violent phenomena in the universe, such as collisions of black holes, the explosive deaths of massive stars, and the big bang itself. But they are so fantastically weak that they have only recently been observed, following decades of effort by a worldwide collaboration. The latest detection, from the merger of a pair of neutron stars, was observed not only in gravitational waves but also across the electromagnetic spectrum, from high-energy gamma rays, through visible light, to radio wavelengths. I will discuss how we are using this event to yield insights into astrophysics, cosmology, and the behaviour of matter under some of the most extreme conditions found in Nature.

Patrick undertook his graduate studies at the University of Alberta, studying the renormalisation of quantum field theories in curved spacetimes, and graduated in 2000. He then spent two and a half years as a postdoctoral fellow in the gravitational physics group at Penn State University, followed by a four-year stint as a senior postdoctoral fellow and then a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of Cardiff University as a senior lecturer in June 2007, and was promoted to Reader in 2012 and Professor in 2016.

Look up at the night sky for a while and you will see a streak of light, as a meteor, the size of a grain of sand, burns up in our atmosphere. On average, every 5000 years an object, large enough to make a crater 1 km in diameter, strikes the Earth. We will look at past impacts, including that of 1906, that demolished 40 million trees, which may be related to even larger events within the last 10 000 years. We will examine the origin of these impacts and see what we are doing to predict and prevent them.

Robin Catchpole, recent Senior Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, currently works at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. He took a BSc at University College, London, before being posted to the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. He received his doctorate from the University of Cape Town. In 1991 he returned to the Royal Greenwich Observatory, where he worked until it closed in 1998. He has authored and co-authored over 120 research papers and has used telescopes around the world including the Hubble Space Telescope. His research interests include the composition of stars, exploding stars, the structure of our Galaxy and galaxies with central black holes. He gives numerous popular lectures and radio and TV interviews.

How can the combination of advanced astronomical telescopes and the humble Zebrafish help us understand and cure heart disease? By working together across traditional boundaries researchers are now solving highly complex challenges in the life sciences. This work is leading to significant advances in understanding a wide range of diseases with the target of improved healthcare and quality of life.

The roots of such collaborations can be seen in the invention of the optical microscope around 400 years ago, which led to a totally new way of observing life, resulting in the discovery of the cell and bacteria. These radical breakthroughs led to the desire to image life with ever greater detail leading to significant advances in optical physics and chemistry (the 2014 Nobel Prize for example) and thus driving research forward across many fields.

This lecture will initially look at how the sciences must work together to establish greater understanding and will then focus on recent developments in optical microscopy in particular their use in imaging Zebrafish to help understand heart disease. Examples will be given in which methods originally developed for extremely large astronomical telescopes can help image more deeply into samples to observe biological processes in three dimensions in realtime.

John studied physics at Oxford University before undertaking his PhD research in laser spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen at Southampton. He then worked in industry for ten years initially in the Cambridge area designing novel lasers and optical positioning tables and then for Keeler Ltd leading the development of air puff tonometers (to measure the pressure in the eye) and diode laser systems for the treatment of diabetic-related eye disease.

John moved to Strathclyde University to help establish the Institute of Photonics and found the Centre for Biophotonics, before moving to Durham University in 2009. Here he is based in the physics department but is the director of a university-wide research institute, the Biophysical Sciences Institute, which aims to help solve complex biological challenges by applying and developing new technologies and methods across the physical sciences.

Astronomers have a detailed picture of how the biggest stars die in supernova explosions that leave behind black holes with masses of about 10 times the mass of our Sun. We also have a rich picture of how supermassive black holes with masses of millions to billions of Suns live at the centers of galaxies

They power quasars in which a volume as tiny as our Solar System outshines their host galaxy made of billions of stars. As in Hercules A, they fire jets of particles – like firehoses – millions of light years into space. I review how this picture got developed and how we have found direct evidence for supermassive black holes, starting with my first black hole discovery in the Andromeda Galaxy in 1988.

They power quasars in which a volume as tiny as our Solar System outshines their host galaxy made of billions of stars. As in Hercules A, they fire jets of particles – like firehoses – millions of light years into space. I review how this picture got developed and how we have found direct evidence for supermassive black holes, starting with my first black hole discovery in the Andromeda Galaxy in 1988.

John Kormendy is an observational astronomer who works on galaxy structure and evolution. He was born in Graz, Austria and grew up near Welland, Ontario, Canada.

He got his BSc from the University of Toronto in 1970 and his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1976.

After postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley and at Kitt Peak National Observatory, he was a Staff Member at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, B. C., Canada in the 1980s and a Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the 1990s.

At both institutions, he benefited from access to telescopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, which provided the best optical-wavelength image quality prior to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Since 2000, he has been at the University of Texas at Austin, where he held the Curtis T. Vaughan, Jr. Centennial Chair in Astronomy.

He is Emeritus since 2017.

Awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Muhlmann Prize of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and External Membership at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching-by-Munich, Germany.

He was an Associate Editor of Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics from 2004–2014.

Half of the starlight in the Universe is hidden from visible telescopes, having been quenched by fine clouds of dust particles in interstellar space. This missing energy reappears in the infrared and terahertz regions of the spectrum, and can only be studied fully from spaceborne telescopes. Now thanks to a series of international space observatories this hidden Universe has been fully revealed. The observations reveal new classes of objects and phenomena, including the discovery of the most luminous and active star-forming galaxies in the Universe. These objects provide glimpses into the early histories of galaxies like our own, and new insights into the physical processes that shaped the Hubble sequence of galaxies

Robert Kennicutt is the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy and Fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. He is an internationally recognised expert in observational extragalactic astronomy, and has authored more than 400 papers on the structure and evolution of galaxies, star formation, and observational cosmology. He took up his position in Cambridge in 2005, and prior to that held faculty positions at the University of Arizona and the University of Minnesota, as well as the editorship of The Astrophysical Journal, the leading North American research journal in astronomy. He won the Dannie Heineman Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics in 2007 for his research on star formation in galaxies, and shared the 2009 Gruber Cosmology Prize (with Wendy Freedman and Jeremy Mould) for their work on calibrating the extragalactic distance scale. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and has participated in numerous policy-making activities including the most recent decadal surveys of astronomy for Europe and the USA.

An overview of some of the discoveries made by the Cassini spacecraft mission to the Saturn system will be described, as well as plans for the end of mission orbits and the unique science which will result, the JUICE mission to Jupiter system will also be described

Professor Michele Dougherty is the Principle Investigator of the magnetometer instruument on the NASA Cassini spacecraft mission at Saturn as well as the upcoming ESA JUICE mission to the Jupiter system. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012 and is presently Chair of the UK Space Agency’s Science Programme Advisory Committee

The great discoveries of the “Astronomical Renaissance”, by Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo, were made in Continental Europe. It may seem strange, therefore, that the next great steps forward-in planetary dynamics, telescopic observation, ellipticalorbit demonstration, and practical instrumentation – occured across 80 miles of Lancashire and Yorkshire countryside, between Liverpool, Preston, Salford, and Leeds. Yet this is exactly what happened. Three private individuals, fully informed of the European discoveries, were at the forefront of the next wave of astronomical innovation: Jeremiah Horrocks of Liverpool and Preston; William Crabtree of Salford; and William Gascoigne of Leeds. Working and corresponding between 1635 and 1644, these three men were the founders of the ‘new’ astronomy in Great Britain. And by the 1660s – by which time all were dead – they would be hailed by the new Royal Society in London, known in Paris, Leiden and Bologna, while Jeremiah Horrock’s great Venus transit observation of 1639 – from the village of Much Hoole – would be published in Danzig (Gdansk) by his great Polish admirer, Johannes Hevelius, in 1662. The Three Astronomers’ story is such that one could scarcely believe it if it were not true.

Allan Chapman is a Lancastrian from Swinton and Pendlebury, Salford. He left a “tough” secondary modern school at 16 and worked full time for 7 years, gaining ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels at night school. He entered Lancaster University in 1969 and took a first in history, going on to Oxford to do his doctorate, where he still is. He has had a passion for both science and history since childhood, and in particular, with the work of the “Three North country Astronomers”. In 2014, he was “Outstanding Alumnus” of Lancaster University and the 2015 Jackson-Gwilt Medallist of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is just completing his 11th book, his previous one of which had chapters on the “Northcountry Astronomers” and their world: this was ‘Stargazers: Copernicus, Galileo, the telescope and the Church. The Astronomical Renaissance, 1500-1700.’ (Lion Books, 2014). He is also active in the relationship between science and Christianity, and still makes regular visits to his old Church and community in Swinton and Pendlebury. in 2004, Allan was very honoured when UCLan gave him an honorary doctorate.

Although the idea of ‘black holes’ dates back over 200 years, they remained a speculation until the late 20th century. Predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, their existance has now been confirmed by observation but questions regarding their creation and influence are at the forefront of modern astronomy.

Astronomers can never hope to travel to black holes and instead rely on the coded infomation contained within the light detected from around these distant objects. The visible light to which our human eyes are most sensitive represents only a small fraction of the total light available for collection; technological advances in the 20th and 21st centuries have ensured that we can collect light ranging from the highest energy gamma rays, through X-rays to long wavelenght radio waves – the whole range of the ‘electromagnetic specturm’.

In this talk, Professor Mundell will explain what is known about black holes – big and small – and prospects for future direct detection. She will describe recent advances in autonomous robotic observation, which catch the light that signals the birth of new black holes in real time. In particular, she will present new insights gleaned with novel cameras – the RINGO polarimeters on the Liverpool Telescope – have provided the first direct, real-time measurements of the magnetic fields that are thought to power these prodigious explosions.

Carole Mundell is a Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy and Head of Astrophysics at the University of Bath. An observational astrophysicist, Mundell began her research career as a radio astronomer at Jodrell Bank Observatory, before diversifying to exploit international ground- and space-based facilities across the electromagnetic spectrum with the goal of understanding cosmic black holes and their environments. As a passionate communicator of science Mundell is a regular contributer to radio, TV and online media and an advocate of diversity in science.

The search for extra-terrestrial life is accompanied by enormous optimism, including the idea that we will one day, with sufficient technology, communicate with other intelligences. However, will we ever talk to aliens or are we forever destined to detect only microbes beyond the Earth? Even if we want to, will we ever visit other stars? Join is for this informative and engaging talk to find out more.

Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology. He received his PhD in molecular biophysics at the University of Oxford and worked for four years at the NASA Ames Research Centre. He is Director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology. He is author of a number of books, including, Space on Earth (Macmillan), which explores the links between space exploration and environmentalism.

Gravity plays a fundamental role in every aspect of the universe, from its Big Bang beginnings to enabling life in diverse ways. Assisted by illustrative magic tricks, this lecture will explain what gravity is, how greatly its strength varies across the universe, and illustrate some if its properties. In particular, the discussion will cover black holes, the strongest sources of gravity and the most bizarre objects in the cosmos. Topics will also include space-time distortion, gravitational lensing, Hawking radiation, and the possible cosmological relevance of black holes: Big Bang multiverse creation, the cosmic flow of entropy; and the existence of life itself.

John Brown has been 10th Astronomer Royal for Scotland since 1995. He held the Chair of Astrophysics in Glasgow University 1984-1996 then till 2010 was 10th Regius Professor of Astronomy in Glasgow University. He is now Leverhulme Emeritus Research Fellow. He has published around 300 research papers on solar flares, stellar winds, comet-sun impacts and inverse problems. He has held research fellowships in 17 institutions worldwide and won the 2012 Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal for his solar research. As ARfS he gives frequent talks to a wide range of audiences, often using conjuring to demonstrate exotic phenomena, activities which won him a UK Institute of Physics Outreach Prize. He has wide arts interests and is currently learning alto sax. More info at www.johncbrown.org

The aurora borealis or “northern lights” are clear evidence of the Earth’s link to the space environment surrounding our planet. These mysterious dancing lights in the night sky have captivated observers since ancient times. In regions bordering the Arctic Circle, aurorae feature heavily in the mythology and folklore of numerous cultures, but what causes these beautiful displays in the polar sky? Jim Wild, Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University, will explore our planet’s intimate relationship with the Sun and reveals the physics behind the northern lights.

Jim Wild is a scientist studying the space environment and the links between the Sun, the Earth and other planets. He studied for a degree in Physics with Space Science and Technology before completing a doctorate in solar-terrestrial physics at the University of Leicester. He is now the Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University’s Department of Physics and a Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society. Jim’s research investigates the physics behind the aurora borealis, the impact of space weather on human technology and the interaction between the Martian atmosphere and the interplanetary environment. As well as exploiting an international flotilla of satellites, this research has regularly taken him to the high arctic to carry out experiments. As a passionate science communicator, has established himself as a popular speaker for public audiences and he also contributes to print and broadcast media.

Dr Chris Lintott explains how more than 800,000 volunteers armed with nothing more than a web browser have helped astronomers discover planets, explore distant galaxies and map the Milky Way. Along the way, Dr Lintott will touch on progress on the big questions in astronomy – how the Universe has evolved over the last 13.8 billion years, and whether there could be life out amongst the stars?

Dr Chris Lintott is a researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. He is principal investigator for the Zooniverse citizen science platform, the world’s largest and most successful set of scientific crowd-sourcing projects.

A passionate advocate for the public understanding of science, Dr Lintott is best known as co-presenter of the BBC’s long-running ‘Sky at Night’

In the mid-1960s, several theorists proposed a clever mechanism that would get around an embarrassing problem in physics. The highly successful theories developed described the experimental evidence very well – but only if all particles had no mass. Introducing masses broke the theories. The new mechanism also made a prediction,a s first pointed out by Peter Higgs; there should be a new particle, with some unusual properties. Unfortunately, theory did not say what mass it would have, and so what energy particle accelerator you needed to look for it. In Summer 2012, the hunt finally seemed to conclude, with the observation by ATLAS and a sister experiment CMS of a new particle with superficially the correct properties. The evidence that it was really the Higgs grew with more data, and Higgs and Englert were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theory. For the experiments, the studies continue to confirm if the particle is the one and only Higgs, or if it is evidence for bigger theories that can also explain mysteries like Dark Matter.

Prof Roger Jones is Head of the Particle, Space and Accelerator Division of Lancaster University, and also head of the Lancaster group on the ATLAS experiment at the large Hadron Collider (LHC). He has worked on the construction, operation and analysis of ATLAS since 1996, and is in charge of its computing for the UK, with responsibilities worldwide. Prior to working at the LHC, he worked on the previous accelerator, the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), on the OPAL and ALEPH experiments, making important measurements of the electroweak interaction (which is also instrumental in powering the Sun) and the strong interaction (which hold nuclei and most particles together, and is the origin of most of the mass of everyday objects). His PhD was on neutrino and antineutrino interactions, again making important measurements of the electroweak interaction. He studied at Christ Church Oxford and the University of Birmingham, and worked at Queen Mary University of London and CERN. His interests outside of work time are skiing, wine and Dr Who.

We humans are visual creatures: “seeing is believing”. But there are other ways to know the world and universe. Some animals such as bats “see” with sound. 2500 years ago the Pythagoreans believed in a celestial Music of the Spheres, an idea that reverberated down the millennia in Western music, literature, art and science. Now we know that there is a real Music of the Spheres. The stars have sounds in them that we can use to see right to their very cores. This multi-media lecture looks at the relationship of music to stellar sounds. You will hear the real sounds of the stars (with a key change) and you will hear musical compositions where every member of the orchestra is a real (astronomical) star! You will also hear about the latest discoveries from the Kepler Space Mission that let’s us “hear” the stars 100 times better than with telescopes on the ground. You will find out how stellar sounds help the Kepler Space Mission in its exciting search for another Earth.

Don Kurtz was born in San Diego to an American father and Canadian mother. He obtained his PhD in astronomy from the University of Texas in 1976, then spent 25 years in South Africa at the University of Cape Town. He is now Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. Don observes with some of the largest telescopes in the world, has over 2000 nights at the telescope, and is the discoverer of a class of pulsating, magnetic stars that are the most peculiar stars known. He is a member of the steering committee of the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium, and is co-author of the fundamental textbook, “Asteroseismology“.

The distinguished Professor Paul Murdin will discuss the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the Universe. This is the subject of his latest book “Are We Being Watched?” (Thames & Hudson). Professor Murdin will be presenting some of his conclusions on extraterrestrial life at the lecture. The scope of this subject is vast, ranging from modern theories of how life on Earth began to attempting to infer how life might develop on other planets different from our own. If we do eventually find extraterrestrial life, how might we communicate with aliens.

Paul Murdin has had a long and illustrious career. He discovered the first stellar black hole in our Galaxy, Cygnus X-1, in 1971. He has been Director of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, President of the European Astronomical Society, Director of Science in the British National Space Centre and Treasurer of the Royal Astronomical Society. He has published over 150 scientific papers and is author of numerous books on astronomy, including “Secrets of the Universe”. He has avidly communicated astronomy to a general audience, including appearing in BBC television’s “Sky at Night” as well as many public lectures.