Cosmic Canvas: From Cells to Complexity

Exploring the synergy where the human capacity for intuition and emotion intertwines with the computational prowess of AI, unlocking the potential for innovation and understanding in knowledge and experience.

Christmas 2021 brought astronomers a very special gift in the form of the James Webb Space Telescope. In the two years since, there has been a revolution in the study of the early Universe. I will show you how we use this telescope to explore the near beginnings of time, witnessing the formation and growth of the very first galaxies back when the Universe was only a few percent of its current age. We will explore the first discoveries that were made, the unexpected challenges that were faced and some instances where things didn’t quite work the way we thought.

Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago but the first single-celled life would not appear until ~ 3.7 billion years ago. Life evolved away but remained simple for a very long time. Some of these early lifeforms started to complicate matters by producing a terrible pollutant (Oxygen) that would impact the whole planet, but also the evolution of life. Then, around 2.2 billion years ago there was a new cell on the block, one that that had the ability to really make life really complicated. Join Phil on a journey of fossils, beer, extinctions, and dinosaurs…what could possibly go wrong.