The Long Road to the Higgs Boson – and Beyond
The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s LHC accelerator in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations was the culmination of a decades-long search that had started in 1964 with the proposal of this unique particle, a signature of the origin of the....
More details | Watch nowCommunicating with light
Most of the data we generate and receive (whether emails, tweets, videos or mobile calls) are now carried by optical fibres, which use light to transmit vast quantities of information over trans-oceanic distances. The use of hundreds of wavelengths ....
More details | Watch nowMusic, architecture and acoustics in Renaissance Venice: Recreating lost soundscapes
During the Renaissance in Venice, composers such as the Gabrieli and Moneverdi created some of their greatest masterpieces for performance in the great churches on festive occasions. But what would the music have sounded like, given its complexity an....
More details | Watch nowThe Centenary of the Discovery of Cosmic Rays: the End of the Beginning
Sir Arnold Wolfendale FRS is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Durham, and former Astronomer Royal. In 1912, Victor Hess embarked on a perilous balloon ascent and discovered the 'Cosmic Radiation', actually a beam of atomic particles....
More details | Watch nowThe search for a deeper understanding of our universe at the Large Hadron Collider
With the start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, particle physics entered a new era. The LHC will provide a deeper understanding of the universe and the insights gained could change our view of the world, and the lecture will present some o....
More details | Watch nowPlastic fantastic: electronics for the 21st century
Plastics - or, more correctly, polymers have traditionally been used by the electronics industry as passive materials. Now however, new types of polymers have been discovered which behave as semiconductors. For example, they can emit light when subje....
More details | Watch nowThe mesoscopic world – from plastic bags to brain disease.
Structures looking broadly the same in the optical microscope are found in starch granules within plants, in polythene bags and in sections of diseased brain tissue. Athene Donald explores structural similarities between different assemblies of polym....
More details | Watch nowThe quandary of the quark
99.9% of the visible material in the universe is made of quarks and yet we know surprisingly little about them. Professor Davies describes how the properties of the quark are now being revealed, and the implications that this will have for our unders....
More details | Watch nowOptical science in the fast lane
In this talk Wilson Sibbett introduces some of the underlying concepts that have enabled us to develop practical ultrafast lasers and a selection of applications that range from the fundamentals of chemical bonding to weapons decommissioning!
More details | Watch nowEinstein’s legacy as scientist and icon
What might 'new Einsteins' achieve in the 21st century? Science offers more intellectual challenges than ever, but is a less individualistic enterprise. Technology offers imense opportunities, but poses threats and ethical dilemmas. Can scientists re....
More details | Watch nowWhat is quantum non-locality?
In his talk Sandu will explain this quantum non-locality and present some of the uses of non-locality for quantum information and communication - strange effects such as teleportation - and will discuss the implications of non-locality for understand....
More details | Watch nowParticle Physics and the Mysteries of the Early Universe
Dr Cristina Lazzeroni, a Royal Society University Research Fellow from the University of Birmingham, reveals the secrets of the world's largest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider and how the LHC experiments hope to answer big questions about the ....
More details | Watch nowThe LHC: largest experiment and smallest particles
The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. It is capable of recreating the very energetic conditions last seen in the universe a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, and allows particle physicists to study the fundamental ingr....
More details | Watch nowEvery picture tells a story
We will look at the role of pictures and images in the development of science. From the first graphs and illustrated books to Molscript, the influence of the first pictures of spiral galaxies on Van Gogh's 'Starry Night', to the artistic resonances o....
More details | Watch nowTaming the Quanta
Devices are now reaching the realm where individual structures are made up of only a few atoms so that quantum mechanics, the theory of the very small, is playing a crucial role. The inevitable quantum fluctuations produce noise which was initially e....
More details | Watch nowThe uses of infinity: a philosopher looks at emergent phenomena in physics
Emergence, and its contrary, reduction, are buzz-words in both physics and philosophy. Both physicists and philosophers disagree about the extent to which we can understand large-scale or complex phenomena in terms of their microscopic parts.
More details | Watch nowItems per page: