Speaker profile

We hear a lot about dark matter in astronomy. Some people consider it a fudge. In this talk we'll go through the evidence for dark matter and the history of it, and answer the questions in the title. No particular prior knowledge is assumed.

Astronomy is mostly a visual and non-experimental science. We can only look at what is out there but can't brings stars and galaxies into the lab. However we can build them inside computers and attempt to simulate them. In this talk, we will see how simulations can show us how the universe evolves and what we can do with them, and what areas we are still struggling to make models of.

What are galaxies, how are they classified, how are they formed, what do we understand about their lives, and how many pretty pictures can I fit in one talk.

     An observing trip to the Isaac Newton telescope. I got a chance to do some observing with the 2.5 m Isaac Newton telescope, should be straightforward? Just click and point? Not quite!     So what does it actually take to set up and use a professional telescope? How do you plan and execute an observing run?

The Moon is a shy body, it only ever shows one sides of itself to the Earth. Before the space age, we had no idea what was on the far side of the Moon. This has led to a number of conspiracy theories that it is a haven for aliens. In this talk, we'll chart the progress of how we got to see what was on the far side of the Moon, and what we found there. Tin foil hats are optional!

What sort of rockets or spaceships could we use to go to the distant stars. We will explore some of the crazier designs that have been proposed over the years, most of which have some possibility of working. The future may be nearer than we think!

Black holes have got a pretty bad rap from films and books, being looked on as terrifying objects that suck spaceships and astronauts to their doom. Are they really that bad? How are they made? Can you escape from one?

After a very brief review of how telescopes work, we look at some of the existing telescopes, both visible and other wavebands, and consider why they are so big, what they can and can't see and what the telescopes planned for the next few years will deliver.