Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
Since Newton, we are used to science making confident predictions about the future. For example, the motion of the planets and the times of the tides. However, some things seem very hard to predict, such as the stock market, or the weather in six months' time.
Professor Silk will describe the state of our knowledge of neutron stars and black holes, and how new observations of gravity waves are poised to revolutionise this field.
We shall investigate the implications for the future of international conflict and of national defence. If preparations for the next war have already started, can we tell who is winning?
The lecture will consist of tabletop demos of such toys, together with simple, robust modelling of what is going on. The theme that emerges is singularity.
Asteroid impact could devastate the Earth, although preventive measures might detect and monitor orbits of potential killer asteroids. Longer term, the sun will evolve into a red giant and expand to a hundred times the orbit of the earth.
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