Rutherford Appleton Lectures

The Talking Science Team are very pleased to announce that booking is now open for their winter talks in the Talking Science series at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.  They have some great speakers coming up, and you can book online via the event page:
 
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/talking-science-at-rutherford-appleton-laboratory-tickets-27251405688

The upcoming talks are:

Stopping bad guys with lasers

Stuart Bonthron, Vice President Product Development, Cobalt Light Systems
Friday 9 December 2016, 1:30pm/7pm, audience: 7+ 
Using lasers to see inside stuff and gather unique fingerprints of what’s inside has some really useful applications. Stuart will discuss and demonstrate a range of techniques and products that use Raman spectroscopy in airport security, bomb disposal, pharmaceutical manufacture and others.

Searching for ripples in spacetime from cosmic collisions

Dr Mark L.A. Richardson, University of Oxford
Friday 20 January 2017, 1:30pm/7pm, audience: 12+ 
The LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory recently detected two different collisions of black holes, each happening over a billion light years away and, we think, emitting no light. So how can LIGO ‘see’ these collisions happening? The colliding black holes cause ripples in the fabric of space and time that travel across the Universe, and are eventually measured simultaneously by the twin LIGO detectors in North America. These detections are opening a new window to the Universe, allowing us to test General Relativity in new ways, and broadening our understanding of the formation and evolution of stars.

The flash bang science show!

Lewis Owen, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and University  of Cambridge
Friday 17 February 2017, 1:30pm/7pm, audience: 8+ 
Coloured flames, speedy reactions, liquid nitrogen and hydrogen gas – finding out where atoms are and what they’re doing! Find out how scientists from the ISIS Neutron and Muon source use a particle accelerator to explore the properties of materials, and discover some of the fascinating systems they study.