Due to the Corona virus we will do not have confirmation of when we are able to begin the 2021/2022 season. Any updates will be added to the index page.
26 January 2021 Matteo Cataneo, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh : “Cosmic dissonance: A tale of two universes”
The field of Cosmology has never been short of disputes and lively debates, often with two opposing groundbreaking ideas competing to become part of the accepted “standard” model of that time: static vs expanding space, nebulae vs galaxies, steady-state model vs big bang theory, and more. Over the past 10 years we have been witnessing a gradual bifurcation of the modern standard model of Cosmology and have now reached a critical point: one story fits perfectly the 13.5 billion year-old detailed picture of the infant universe we reconstructed using microwave telescopes; yet, events unfolding on cosmological scales have been following a different script for the past 10 billion years.
12th February 2021
Pete Kuzma, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh : “The Great Galactic Graveyard of the Milky Way”
The peacefulness of the night sky is hiding a horrendous secret - the Milky Way is littered with remains of smaller galaxies that met an unfortunate end when attempting to interact with our larger galaxy.
