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The media and medicine have different perspectives. This lecture will use examples of how the public may be misled and consider the implications of such misunderstanding.
I will argue for the essential unity of speech and gesture in the transmission of thought, and suggest that we have underestimated the considerable communicative significance of these movements.
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.
What are the implications of the Big Bang for our understanding of ourselves? Is the universe meaningless? or is there some way of developing a ‘big picture’ of reality that helps us decide our place and purpose in the universe.
Matter consists of a mêlée of elementary particles. There are protons and neutrons, made up of quarks, and many other short-lived massive particles. One hope is to discover particles of dark matter, but this has so far eluded our best efforts.