BAA Christmas Meeting 2023

We will be holding our 2023 Christmas Meeting on Saturday 9th December from 2pm to 7pm at the Institute of Physics in London. Lectures will start at 2:30pm and we shall be holding a drinks reception from 6pm until 7pm in the area outside the lecture theatre

Please follow this link to book your free ticket.

YouTube

We expect the meeting to be livestreamed to the BAA YouTube channel.

Programme

14:00 Doors open with refreshments available outside the lecture theatre
14:30 BAA President – Welcome, notices and awards
14:50 Prof Martin Hendry – Listening to Einstein’s Universe: Dawn, and Exciting Future, of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy
15:35 Tea
16:05 Prof Lyndsay Fletcher – Exploring the Solar Atmosphere: A Journey through the Sun’s Spectrum
16:50 John Chuter & Richard McKim – Digitising the BAA’s Archives
17:00 Nick James – Sky Notes
17:55 Close

Christmas Drinks

From 6pm until 7pm we will be holding a Christmas drinks reception at the IOP. This will include wine, fruit juice and sparkling water with mince pies.

Talk Synopses

Listening to Einstein’s Universe: The Dawn, and Exciting Future, of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of the cosmos predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago and produced by some of the most extreme phenomena in the universe: exploding stars, colliding black holes, even the Big Bang itself. To detect them has required the construction of the most sensitive scientific instruments ever built: giant laser interferometers capable of measuring tiny changes in the curvature of space, less than a millionth millionth the width of a hair. Such technology may sound like science fiction, yet these remarkable instruments are now routinely detecting the spacetime ripples from colliding black holes billions of light years from the Earth.

Join University of Glasgow scientist and “black hole hunter” Professor Martin Hendry for a whistle-stop tour through the exciting new field of gravitational-wave astronomy: the ground-breaking discoveries that Martin and his colleagues are making, the remarkable engineering and technology that has enabled them, and how they are helping us to tackle the mysteries of Einstein’s universe.

Speaker Bios

Martin Hendry is Professor of Gravitational Astrophysics and Cosmology at the University of Glasgow, where he is also Clerk of Senate and Vice Principal of the University. He is a senior member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration: the global team of more than 1500 scientists who, with their colleagues in the Virgo Collaboration, made the first ever detection of gravitational waves – a discovery awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics. Martin is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and is also a Fellow (and currently Vice-President) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh – Scotland’s National Academy. He is a passionate advocate for science education and communication and in 2015 he was awarded the MBE for services to the public understanding of science.

Retailers

Venue

INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS, 37 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9BU