Prices: £6.50 adults, £5.50 concessions & students (Includes free entry to the exhibition after 5pm).

Free entry for teachers and STEM Ambassadors

Recent lectures:

What do meteorite impacts "mean" for the Earth, and for us?  In a computer age we are used to the idea that buttons - on a keyboard, for example - can do different things, depending on the context in which they are pressed.  On a complex and evolving system like the living Earth, meteorite impacts (which since the 1980s we have come to think of in the context of the extinction of dinosaurs) cannot just "mean" one thing.  The effect of such events depends equally, if not more, upon the context in which they happen.  A huge impact (or possibly more than one) 65 million years ago, when the Earth was already experiencing several other environmental catastrophes (catastrophes which may have been enough to cause mass extinctions on their own) was undoubtedly a factor in making that event worse.  Yet 400 million years earlier, when Earth's biosphere was very different and conditions more benign, prolonged bombardment seems to have provided a stimulus to the greatest diversification of life seen since complex life first developed.  Seeking to attribute one single "meaning" to natural phenomena like impacts is, geologists are discovering, grossly simplistic.

  TED NIELD holds a doctorate in geology and currently works for the Geological Society of London, where he is Editor of their monthly magazine Geoscientist. He was chair of the Association of British Science Writers and was a goodwill ambassador for the UN International Year of Planet Earth in 2008. He is a fellow of the Geological Society and a member of the Meteoritical Society. His first book, SUPERCONTINENT: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet, was published in 2007 (Granta/Harvard University Press). He lives in London.

25th May 2011 at 6:30pm

Tim Leighton

Sound is more than noise: - do whales sing, and can humans talk on Mars?

We think of ourselves as ‘seeing’ creatures, and in the news ‘sound’ most usually appears in the context of noise nuisance from neighbours, airports or ipods.

This limits our thinking: we have spent billions sending probes to land on other worlds to send back photograph of alien landscapes, but have never heard what Mars or Venus sound like. A camera on a space probe cannot detect the rumble of thunder or the babble of a stream of liquid ethane of Saturn’s moon Titan. An astronaut walking down a hillside on Mars would rely on hearing as much as a rambler on Earth, to indicate for example that the walker behind has fallen or has set off a rockslide. But could a suit microphone pick up such warnings?

In a similar vein, sound on Earth is so much more than the nuisance of a neighbour or airport. Even the spectacular abilities of language and music to communicate and evoke emotion do not represent the limits of how sound can be used. In the oceans sound, not light, is what travels to distance, and the whales and dolphins there have found extraordinary ways of using sound to communicate, sense, and even to kill.

Tim Leighton is Professor at Ultrasonics and Underwater Acoustics. He is internationally known (and indeed has several international medals from scientific societies) for thinking about how sound enters into all manner of disciplines: zoology, biology, medicine, physics, engineering and chemistry (and indeed those same medal citations refer to him as “a world leader in four fields”). However he is also an effective communicator, with TV and radio appearances, and is invited to give talks around the world each year. More information is available at: http://www.isvr.soton.ac.uk/staff/staff7.htm

The Westgate Lecture 

22nd June 2011 at 6:30pm

Bryson GoreChemistry is Elementary

What is Chemistry today, How did it start and Where is it going? The elements that make up the Universe have always been a central area of human inquiry and as their identities were discovered, the Periodic Table became one of the cornerstones of Chemistry. It’s development mirrors the evolution of Achemy into the science of modern Chemistry. But in that process Chemistry has changed from the study of what the elements of matter are, into the study of what may be done with those elements. This show traces the development of the periodic table from ancient Greece to the present day using demonstrations to show how the concept of periodic properties has withstood the passage of time. Additionally, by looking at extracts from the life and work of the 19th century’s most famous chemist we will demonstrate how the need for both qualitative and quantitative analysis led to the development of simple modern analytical techniques.

 Dr Bryson Gore, spent 17 years working at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and has used his experience to bring the excitement and fun of science to audiences ranging from primary and secondary schools to the general public. Working in live shows in schools and on television, he has helped people to see science in action. Through his books he has introduced many children to some of the amazing facts about the world around us and how science can provide an explanation for what might easily be considered a 'mystery of the Universe'.

Today he splits his time between taking live schows out to schools all over the UK, writing popular science books and scripts for other groups, and developing a website to enable people to bring together the wealth of knowledge that exists on the web, about using practical science to promote the public understanding of science.