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In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli invented a new particle to save the principle of energy conservation in certain radioactive decays he was studying.
Most English people initially saw the Reformation as an unexpected catastrophe, wrenching their religious lives out of shape, and stripping their communities of resources they had naively believed belonged to them.
Over the last 30 years, digital technology produced an exponential increase in astronomical data. Within our lifetime, the entirety of the visible universe will have been mapped out: we will have seen everything there is to see. The question will then be: what does it all mean?
Accounts of occasional celestial spectacular events in past centuries have provided crucial information for modern-day astrophysicists. One such example is the so-called Great Eruption of Eta Carinae which was for a time in the mid 19th century the third brightest object in the night sky.
Well-trained eyes can be remarkably useful for capturing light curves of evolving objects in the cosmos, even contributing to modern research programmes.
At longer wavelengths than the normal optical wavelengths to which human eyes are normally sensitive, is the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
England’s Catholic Reformation is the reformation that sixteenth-century England nearly had: a reformed and renewed English Catholic Church, its new schools and revived parishes matched with a firm smack of discipline.
Mars has changed since it formed 4.6 billion years ago. When life started on Earth ~4 billion years ago, Mars was habitable too, with volcanism, a magnetic field, surface water and a thick atmosphere. Today, Mars is cold and dry, with a thin atmosphere and harsh surface.
The story of the Mayflower is usually presented as a tale of persecuted Pilgrims crossing the Atlantic in circumstances of grave adversity to inhabit a desolate wilderness.
This talk will consider how expectation plays a role in discovery and in scientific advance, and considers the challenges involved in assessing changes taking place on our own planet.