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.
Where did we come from? This question has always intrigued human thought. Professor Silk will describe the modern scientist's view of the origin of the cosmos.
Why has it taken so long to crack the speech processing puzzle? Why do we find speech processing so effortless and machines find it so daunting? And what progress can we expect in the next few years?
What can we learn from history about how deeply the internet could transform news in the 21st century? And how does it relate to broader social and economic trends?
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.
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.