Christmas Lecture - 2001

Lucifer's Legacy - life, the universe and almost everything

Friday 7th December 2001 Pennine Lecture Theatre Sheffield Hallam University Public Family Lecture 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm Presented by Professor Frank Close OBE, University of Oxford   Oughtibridge Brass Band booked to play Christmas Carols.

Details:
Professor Close is that rare being: an internationally recognised scientist who really knows how to communicate his ideas to the general public. Most people will know of him through his Royal Institution Christmas lecture series "The Cosmic Onion" which brought the world of particle physics alive for a wide and appreciative audience.

This is an entertaining lecture with demonstrations, cartoons and NO equations. Suitable for all the family.

How old is the universe; how do we know, and why is there anything anyway? Modern science describes a uniformly perfect creation; a universe in which matter would have to been destroyed within an instant of its appearance and nothing that we now know could ever have happened. Human life itself seems lopsided as the spherical embryo is transformed into a highly structured being with its internal organs mirror asymmetric. The molecules of life differ from their mirror images: the milk in Alice 's looking glass would not have been fit to drink.

In his recent book Lucifer's Legacy, physicist and broadcaster Frank Close explores the origins of asymmetry from life to the universe at large and asks whether the multitude of examples can be traced back to a single act that took place at the origin of our Universe.

The lecture will form part of SCIENCE YEAR - the United Kingdom 's year of science and engineering technology. As part of this it will be made available to the wider public through the world-wide web.