Interstellar Insights: Celestial Bodies & The Quantum Revolution

Meteors refer to the luminous phenomena that occur when objects from space enter Earth's atmosphere: but how can we predict where these meteorites will land? This talk discusses modelling the so-called 'dark flight' of meteorites (the final stage of a meteorite's descent through the atmosphere), and everything that goes on behind the scenes during a meteorite hunt! I will also discuss meteorite flux modelling and the distribution of objects in the asteroid belt.

Some of the biggest and most active galaxies in the Universe are hidden by dust, invisible to our eyes and only detected by starlight-heated dust. For decades, these dusty galaxies were little more than fuzzy blobs observed by ground-based telescopes. We knew they were forming stars at rates hundreds of times that of our Milky Way, but we often couldn't see inside them. Now with the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared vision cutting through the dust, we have the right tools to travel back to the early Universe when these giants were most active to see the stars and structures hidden within.

Welcome to the second quantum revolution. The first one gave us lasers, electronics, and basically the entire modern world. This time we're manipulating quantum building blocks directly. I'll break down what quantum physics actually is, how we're using it to build super powerful computers, why black holes might be the universe's best hard drives, and how AI is teaming up with fundamental physics in ways nobody saw coming. Only curiosity, no physics degree required.