Life in the Universe
Prof Katherine Blundell, Professor of Astronomy, Gresham University.
6pm, Wednesday 1 June 2022
Museum of London/ Online/ Watch Later
More info & Register at https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/life-universe
How can life form in the Universe, and what are the necessary ingredients for habitability so that planets can sustain life? Can we expect life elsewhere in the solar system, or on exo-planets? This lecture offers a broader perspective from astrobiology, astrochemistry, and astrophysics on the habitability or otherwise of other planets beyond Planet Earth.
The Journey from Black-Hole Singularities to a Cyclic Cosmology
Sir Roger Penrose
6pm, Thursday, 9 Jun 2022
The Old Library, Guildhall / Online/ Watch Later
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/thomas-gresham-22
The “singularity theorems” of the 1960s demonstrated that large enough celestial bodies, or collections of such bodies, would, collapse gravitationally, to “singularities”, where the equations and assumptions of Einstein’s general relativity cannot be mathematically continued. Such singularities are expected to lie deep within what we now call black holes. Similar arguments (largely by Stephen Hawking) apply also to the “Big-Bang” picture of the origin of the universe, but whose singularity has a profound structural difference, resulting in the 2nd law of thermodynamics, whereby “randomness” in the universe increases with time. It is hard to see how any ordinary procedures of “quantization” of Einstein’s theory can resolve this contrasting singularity conundrum,
Additionally if you click on the links above you will notice a back catalogue of previous lectures that can be streamed. All are approximately 1 hour long.
