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.
International negotiations concerning our environment such as on climate and biodiversity, often put the scientific case behind economic and political interests, with potentially disastrous consequences. What does that mean for human prosperity and even survival?
Space today is terrifyingly silent. But it wasn’t always thus: the early universe was filled with a hot plasma in which sound waves could travel. The cosmos was quivering with the aftershocks of the Big Bang.
Highly energetic particles from outer space travelling at the speed of light, known as cosmic rays, originate from the sites of extreme particle acceleration in the Universe.
There is a seismic shift underway in economics, hastened by the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Communities and countries around the world are beginning to adopt/consider adopting well-being and prosperity as major guiding principles.
The baby boomers have accumulated assets and have generous occupational pensions. Should they pass these assets to their descendants, with the risk of growing inequality, or should they be taxed to benefit society as a whole? Is inheriting morally dangerous? Or are inheritance taxes theft?
When light is dispersed into its constituent colours, it can become possible to discern rich dynamical information about an evolving system in space, for example cosmic explosions, collisions or accelerations.
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.
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.
How has Covid-19 re-shaped our ideas about what we owe society? The lockdown has had a terrible impact on the economic prospects of young people, and the elderly have suffered from high mortality in care homes.