Speakers: Dr Ed Macaulay (Queen Mary, University of London) and Professor Gavin Dalton (St Cross, University of Oxford)
We all decide our own paths in space and time, and we all have intuitive expectations as to how space and time behave. Before relativity space and time were just a blank canvas; an empty stage where events can occur. Our intuitions about space and time are still grounded in this notion, but relativity tells us that this is just a glimpse of a far grander picture. In this talk, we’ll discover how space and time are woven together to form the dynamic fabric of space-time, and explore how relativity explains some of the last great questions of classical physics. We’ll discuss how relativity not only had a seismic effect on the history of the 20th century, but also provides a unique perspective on our own path in space-time. As we study phenomena in the wider Universe beyond the distance-, speed- and time-scales of human experience, we encounter a wide range of relativistic phenomena in ‘extreme’ environments and in the fabric of the Universe itself. We will explore some of these situations that present a compelling validation of Einstein’s theory.
