Applying science – from modelling fictional climates to curing disease with light

Light is one of the most useful tools we have in science and engineering today – from ultra-precise sensors to tackle the leading causes of blindness, to a new wave of energy efficient computers. In this talk, I will introduce some of the most interesting applications that use light as a key part of how they work and will discuss how we are now able to shrink experiments that used to fill entire rooms down into devices that fit on the end of your finger.

Dune, the epic series of sci-fi books by Frank Herbert, now turned into a movie of the same name, is set in the far future on the desert planet of Arrakis. Herbert outlined a richly-detailed world that, at first glance, seems so real we could imagine ourselves within it. However, if such a world did exist, what would it actually be like? And could humans survive in it? We are scientists with specific expertise in climate modelling, so we simulated the climate of Arrakis to find out. We wanted to know if the physics and environment from the novels would stack up against a real climate model.