Free Astronomy Public Lectures

This is a special State of the Universe lecture for National Science Week in August 2022. Presented by the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing (CAS) at Swinburne University of Technology. Successfully launched on 25 December 2021, NASA's successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken its first images and will be released to the public 12 July. Join Professor Karl Glazebrook, Dr Themiya Nanayakkara and Dr Colin Jacobs, as they discuss these images and the potential secrets of the universe they reveal. Dr Nicha Leethochawalit from University of Melbourne will share her work on redshifted galaxies (z=10). Presented 19 August 2022.

In astronomy, we use cutting edge instruments and techniques to learn more about our Universe. But what about turning that focus back to Earth? More and more of our daily activities depend on space and it provides a unique perspective of our planet. In this talk, Dr Rebecca Allen (Swinburne University of Technology) will discuss Australia's growing role in the global space industry and how we are using our astronomy knowledge to drive cutting-edge research for Earth. Presented 30 September 2022.

Behind the serenity of the night sky, hides an ever-changing Universe of brilliant explosions. Join us online for an interactive lecture uncovering the State of the Transient Universe with Dr Jielai Zhang as part of National Science Week 2020.

Most of our understanding of stars and how they evolve is based on the assumption that they are completely isolated in space, never interacting with one another. However, studies over the last decade have shown that many more stars than we thought exist in gravitationally-bound binaries, triples, and even larger groupings. The addition of companions increases the complexity in the systems, but also opens up the possibility for interactions between the stars and the formation of unusual astronomical objects. I will discuss the current state of the field, and some of the challenging open questions that continue to puzzle scientists. Presented 22 April 2022.

Einstein dreamt of a Universe in which space and time were curved by matter, and how black holes would represent the ultimate manifestations of his physics, and the possibility of a new type of radiation - gravitational waves. Sadly he died before the discovery of black holes and neutron stars, and so he was unable to witness many of the dramatic experimental confirmations of his theory.In this lecture the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), Professor Matthew Bailes will use Mixed Reality Technologies to demonstrate how scientists have used telescopes and gravitational wave detectors to explore Einstein's universe, and provide astonishing confirmations of his theories using observations of neutron stars and black holes. Presented 19 October 2021.

Presented by Sara Webb and Grace Lawrence on Friday 28 February 2020. When we look to the stars, what we see is a fraction of the universe – only around 5%. Astronomers observe that a mysterious ‘dark universe’ of strange and enigmatic dark energy and dark matter makes up the remaining 95%. Swinburne PhD candidates Sara Webb and Grace Lawrence are working to unravel the mysteries of this dark universe, exploring the fundamental origins and nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Presented by Professor Sheila Kannappan on Monday 16 December 2019. Since ancient times, humans have been drawn to understand the heavens while at the same time observing them with a spiritual sense of wonder. In this talk Professor Kannappan will trace the dual power of truth and awe in the history of astronomy and in our modern world.

Presented by Dr Tiantian Yuan on 29th November 2019. Scientific research is not only fun but also funny. In this end of the year talk, Tiantian Yuan explains how the universe makes us laugh and think.

Presented by Dr Edward (Ned) Taylor on Friday 18 October 2019.At its most basic, astronomy is an attempt to understand the nature of the universe in which we find ourselves. As such, understandings of astronomy have always had a profound impact on how we conceive of and understand ourselves — as a society, if not as individuals. In this talk, I want to share my 'cosmic perspective’: some of the lessons from modern astronomy and astrophysics that I carry with me into my daily life, and how my understanding of the universe shapes how I see the world. I also want to reflect especially on this extraordinary moment in the history of humanity, of our planet, and indeed our universe, and how our visions for our future might be enhanced with a more cosmic perspective.

Presented by Renee Spiewak on Friday 20 September 2019. Like humans, stars often live their long lives in pairs, called binaries. At the end of their lives, they experience drastic transformations, rather than simply ending, and these transformations greatly affect their companions. In this lecture, I will take you on a journey of the many lives (and spectacular deaths/rebirths) of a massive star with a lighter companion star. The mass of a star, among other factors, determines the path it takes and the changes it experiences, and stars in binaries affect each other greatly. In a quiet stellar neighbourhood, this massive star will peacefully spend millions of years with its companion before undergoing a sudden transformation into one of the most extreme objects in the universe. Billions of years later, a second transformation will occur when the star’s companion quietly reaches the end of its life. However, under the right conditions, the pair’s story will not end there.

Presented by Kim Ellis on Friday, 19 July 2019. This will be an informative lecture on how Australia is making a splash on the international space arena as the Australian Space Agency turns one. We will also be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

Presented by Poojan Agrawal on the 21st June 2019. Beyond the twinkling dots in the night sky, there are all sorts of stars that are beautiful and fascinating their own sense. I will share the story of how we came to understand these stars as we know them today using the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and the importance of the lives of these stars in the present-day astrophysical problems.

Presented by Prof. Andreas Burkert on 29th March 2019. The Galactic Center is one of the most fascinating and extreme places in the Milky Way. Harboring a supermassive black hole with a mass of order four million solar masses, it experiences cycles of activity and star formation, separated by periods of quiescence that last of order a million years. The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole currently is inactive. However a small, diffuse gas cloud (G2) has recently been detected on an orbit almost straight into the Galactic Supermassive Black Hole. Like comet Shoemaker Levy’s 1994 collision with Jupiter, the big challenge has started for astrophysicists to predict the outcome of G2’s close encounter with the supermassive black hole. Their models will be validated directly by observations within the next decade.

Presented by Dr Daniel C Price on 22nd February 2019. Thanks to new, more powerful technology, astronomers can search the skies faster and with more resolution than ever before. In this public lecture, I will talk about two exciting fields in astronomy: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and Fast Radio Bursts. The SETI field has been reinvigorated by the 10-year, $100M Breakthrough Listen initiative to search for intelligent life beyond Earth. As a project scientist for Breakthrough Listen, I will introduce the program and detail how we are using new technology to run the most comprehensive search for intelligent life beyond Earth ever undertaken. I will also discuss a mysterious phenomenon known as fast radio bursts: incredibly bright but short-lived signals from distant galaxies, which escaped detection until recently. Could these signals be due to intelligent aliens, or is there an astrophysical explanation? I will give an overview of how a telescope upgrade will help us answer this question, and how Swinburne astronomers will play a leading role. Finally, I will discuss what evidence would convince us that there is indeed life beyond Earth, or that the Universe is ours alone to enjoy.

Presented by Assoc. Prof. Tara Murphy on 23 November 2018. On August 17th 2017 the LIGO-Virgo interferometer detected gravitational waves from a neutron star merger in a galaxy 130 million light years away. This was a breakthrough for physics and astronomy. What followed was a frenzy of activity as astronomers around the world worked to detect electromagnetic radiation with conventional telescopes. After this unprecedented effort the event was detected in gamma-rays, x-rays, visible light and radio waves. I will discuss this incredible scientific result and its implications, including: predictions made by Einstein; the production of gold and other heavy elements; and our understanding of black hole formation. I will also give a 'behind the scenes' perspective of how it happened, and discuss the changes in the way we do science in this era of big astronomy.

Presented by Dr Duane Hamacher and Krystal De Napoli on 1st June 2018. The subject of Indigenous astronomy has skyrocketed in recent years all around the globe. A constant stream of emerging research is changing what we think we know about Aboriginal knowledge systems in Australia and the number of Aboriginal students studying astrophysics is rapidly growing. This lecture will introduce you to one of these students, Kamilaroi woman and astrophysics student Krystal De Napoli, and the research she and Dr Duane Hamacher are conducting with other Aboriginal researchers on topics ranging from Moon haloes, Sun Dogs, and supernovae to the antiquity of deep time oral traditions based on astronomical and geological evidence - even the official naming of Aboriginal stars by the IAU. This talk will explore the many ways in which Indigenous Australians encoded scientific information in their knowledge systems and some of the ways in which they pass this knowledge to successive generations.

Presented on 19 October 2018 by Dr Michelle Cluver. The more we learn about the universe, the mosre it tends to surprise us. This is one of the most exciting aspects of science - making unexpected discoveries! In this talk I will present some recent scientific discoveries I have been involved with and discuss why these and other discoveries have us so excited about the Square Kilometre Array Pathfinders, MeerKAT and ASKAP.

Presented by Assoc. Prof. Jeff Cooke on 11 May 2018. When you look up a the night sky, it appears static and unchanging. However, a closer look using telescopes finds it to be wildly violent. Objects explode, erupt and burst on all time scales, from millions of years to months to milliseconds. Many of these events have been studies in great detail but the fastest have been the most difficult to catch largely because of the technological limitations. This presentation will discuss these fast bursts and our program to catch them.

Presented by Prof. Mike Hudson on 16th March 2018. Most of the matter in the Universe is dark matter: an elusive particle that is completely invisible. But we can “see” this matter by studying how it distorts the light from galaxies in the distant Universe, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. I will give a whirlwind tour of gravitational lensing’s “greatest hits” showing how it can be used as a tool to understand some of the most mysterious things in the Universe: from black holes to the “cosmic web” of dark matter that links galaxies together.

Presented by Dr Emily Petroff on 9 February 2018.Most things in the universe happen over millions or even billions of years but some things change on the timescales of human life and can be seen to change in a matter of months, days, or even seconds. These sources are called transients and are some of the most extreme events in the Universe, things like the collapse of a dying star, or a collision of two massive objects. Humans have been observing astronomical transients for centuries, from supernovae to gamma ray bursts and, most recently, gravitational waves, but recent advances in telescope power and technology mean we’re observing more and more transients each year and even finding new types. In 2007 we discovered a brand new type of transient called fast radio bursts (FRBs), bright radio pulses that last only a few milliseconds. Their origin is one of the newest unsolved mysteries of astronomy but it is clear they are produced in tremendously energetic processes, possibly even billions of light years away. I will tell the story of their discovery, some of our most exciting new breakthroughs, and how new telescopes in Australia and around the world are poised to answer some of the big questions about FRBs in the next few years.

Presented by Dr Thomas E. Collett on Tuesday 14 November 2017.Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that light rays are bent when they travel past a massive object. In this talk, we will explore tests of this prediction and view some of the spectacular consequences of light bending: gravitational lenses. These gravitational lenses let us directly measure where the mass is in the Universe, and the results imply that the Universe is mostly made of an exotic substance called dark matter.

Presented by Dr Tiantian Yuan on Friday 29 September 2017.One of the most prominent features of galaxies today is the manifestation of elegant spiral arms. We live in a beautiful grand-design spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. Our Solar System, including the Earth and the only life that we know, lies within the Orion spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. However, as we look back in time to the very early Universe, the frequency of spiral galaxies decreases dramatically. In fact, most galaxies in the distant past are messy and irregular in shape. Why is it so? When was the first appearance of spiral arms? How were they formed? In this talk, I will take us 11 billion years back in time through the distorted space surrounding nature's most massive structures. We will get a glimpse of earliest onset of spiral arms and directly witness the formation of a spiral galaxy that could later be home to billions of stars and planets like our earth.

Presented by Igor Andreoni on Friday 20 October 2017.The ancients considered the Universe unchanging, and had a special name for the planets, which they regarded as “wanderers”. Any changes in the night sky were seen as portents of doom – and a reason to fear the Gods. The advent of modern astronomy means that we no longer fear changes in the night sky, indeed some of us make our living from them! In this lecture I will tell you the story of the modern transient sky, where stars live and die in spectacular explosions and amazing instruments such as the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave interferometers probe the darkest depths of the Universe. The discovery of gravitational waves was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this month and has the power to reveal a plethora of new science from the merger of black holes and other exotic stars.

Presented by Prof. Patricia Vickers-Rich on Friday 7 July 2017.We have been plotting the history of life around the world and climate over more than 1 billion years. Tonight we will zero in on a time when the Earth's first animals came into the picture - at a time when the planet was in the grips of a massive glaciation, Snowball Earth - which is likely better named Slushball Earth.

Presented by Dr Rebecca Allen on Friday 12 May 2017. Galaxies are the largest structures of matter in our Universe. Our own Milky Way has been studied in glorious detail. We know it has billions of stars, around most of which planets are likely to be found. There is a super massive black hole at its center where anything that gets too close will be consumed. There are intricate dust lanes that obscure the main disk of the galaxy. There is the life-force of stars, hydrogen gas. Finally, there is the mysterious dark matter that acts as a gravitational glue holding the ordinary matter together. But our galaxy is just one of many, and since their discovery, understanding how these complex objects form and evolve has been a focus of astronomers. There are many pathways to reveal more about the nature and evolution of galaxies. In this talk, Dr Rebecca Allen from the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, will share how she uses the sizes of galaxies to understand more about their growth.

Presented by Dr. Themiya Nanayakkara on 21st April 2017.Over the last century, our understanding of the Universe has grown by leaps and bounds whilst posing new questions and testing our very fundamental knowledge and understanding of things around us. To answer these profound questions, scientists are planning ever more ambitious projects driven by human curiosity, to explore the unknown and comprehend our place in the vast senseless space. The Australian federal government in 2016-17 provided AUD 10 billion in support of science research and experiment development while NASA and ESA combined, plans to invest USD 25+ billion in 2017. Why is it important for governments to spend substantial amounts of money in fundamental science research? What are the benefits for the average tax payer, from governments investing billions of dollars into space science? How has our everyday lives been influenced by such investments? Together we shall discuss and explore how our investments in science has improved our way of living, and what the future may hold in store for us.

Presented by Assoc. Prof. Emma Ryan-Weber on 10 February 2017.The whole Universe was in a hot dense state, then nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started. Wait... is the Bang Bang true and how do we know? In this talk Associate Professor Emma Ryan-Weber from the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing will describe the observational evidence for Big Bang Cosmology and how it sets the initial conditions for every atom in the Universe. The talk is especially suitable for year 11 teachers and students studying VCE Physics Unit 1, area of study 3 "What is matter and how is it formed".

Presented by Dr. Tyler Bourke on 24th March 2017.Australia is part of an international effort to build the World's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). In fact, one of the two telescope arrays that make up the SKA will be built in the Western Australian outback near Murchison, about 800 km NNE of Perth, a remote area almost devoid of people, but already the location of two advanced radio telescopes. The other SKA telescope array will be in a similarly isolated location in South Africa. The telescopes of the SKA will provide more than an order-of-magnitude increase in performance over existing radio telescopes, to for example: address fundamental questions on the history of our Universe and the emergence of the first stars and galaxies ; detect the merger of super-massive black-holes at the centres of galaxies through their gravitational waves, and use these events to test Einstein's theories ; detect powerful bursts of radio emission whose origin and nature remain controversial.

On September 14, 2015, gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes rippled through the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). The measurement of these ripples would ultimately lead to the first direct detection of gravitational waves, the first observation of a binary black hole, and the birth of an entirely new field of astronomy. In this talk, Dr Eric Thrane from Monash University, will trace the history of gravitational waves from Einstein to the LIGO detection. Dr Thrane will describe how LIGO works and how we are using it to learn about black holes and other interesting objects. He'll also discuss the future of gravitational-wave astronomy in Australia and around the world. Presented on 16 December 2016.

Presented by Prof. Darren Croton on 21 October 2016.Black holes are among the most bizarre objects predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Many people may not realise that our own galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole at its centre that is three million times more massive than our own Sun! In this talk Professor Darren Croton from the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing will discuss the physics of black holes and their formation, how they can grow to become so massive, active black hole "quasars" in the distant universe, and the unexpected impact that a supermassive black hole can have on the evolution of an entire galaxy. Professor Croton will finish by side stepping into the exotic world of wormholes, the black hole's tormented cousin

Presented by Prof. Matthew Bailes on 30 September 2016. Almost 50 years ago Jocelyn Bell built a new telescope with her supervisor Antony Hewish that had an unusual property: it had high time resolution. The radio sky was thought to only change on long timescales but this new telescope's ability to explore a different regime of phase space meant that it made one of the greatest discoveries in astronomy, that of pulsars. Pulsars are neutron stars, the collapsed cores of once-massive stars. They have been used to perform some of the most accurate experiments in physics, and were the motivation for the construction of the LIGO telescope that recently discovered gravitational waves. In this talk Professor Matthew Bailes will explain how whilst trying to find new pulsars astronomers stumbled across a brand new phenomenon, the Fast Radio Bursts. These millisecond-duration radio flashes appear to be coming from half way across the Universe but nobody knows what they are.

Presented by on 22 July 2016 by Rebecca Allen. In the vast cold reaches of space life has been able to gain a foothold and flourish on at least one planet- ours. We know that water is critical to life, but we do not know how Earth got it. In this talk, we will first explore the ongoing search for the source of Earth's water. Next, we will talk about some of the exciting ways in which we are utilising our knowledge of life on this planet to search for and possibly identify life in other parts of the Universe.

Presented on 17 June 2016 by Allan Duffy. In the last 50 years astronomers have come to realise that there exists an invisible type of mass in the Universe, outweighing all of the atoms in every star, planet and person five times over. It's responsible for holding the galaxy together, for making the galaxies form where they do in the cosmos and is our best guide to physics beyond the Higgs boson, aka the 'god' particle. Yet astronomers are no nearer to understanding its nature. Using a combination of baby universes created on Australia's most powerful telescopes, next generation telescopes like the Australian SKA Pathfinder, and a wine glass, Alan will explore what we know about the invisible and how Australia may uncover the most sought after particle in physics with the world's first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere, SABRE.

Presented on 20 May 2016 by Amanda Karakas. Most of the elements in the periodic table heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in stars. Through the combined studies of stellar spectroscopy, nuclear physics, geochemistry, and astrophysics, humans have been able to work out the origin of many of the chemical elements that naturally occur in our Solar System. We know for example that most of the oxygen in the air was forged in ancient supernova explosions, which are the end product of very massive stars. The carbon in our bodies was synthesized instead by stars covering a wide range of stellar masses, from solar-type stars like our Sun through to massive stars. The biggest mystery today concerns the origins of the elements heavier than iron. In this talk I will take you on a journey through the origin of the elements, with a special focus on where the heaviest elements in nature are formed. in order to do this, I will discuss some basics about the life cycle of stars, which is intimately connected to the story of the origin of the elements through the nuclear reactions that occur deep in their interiors. Presented on 20 May 2016.

Presented on 15 April 2016 by Dr Elisabete da Cunha.Almost one hundred years ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble revolutionised our understanding of the Universe and our place in it when he discovered that it extends beyond the Milky Way. Since then, astronomers have identified millions of galaxies beyond our own, and developed sophisticated techniques to measure their distances and motions. In this talk, I will show how astronomers map the Universe using large surveys of galaxies, and how "cosmic maps" are an essential tool in Cosmology, allowing us to understand the physical nature and history of the Universe.

Presented on 18 March 2016 by Elodie Thilliez and Matthew Agnew.The Solar system is a remarkable place filled with wonderfully varied worlds. Travelling outwards from the sun we first encounter the hellish, rocky bodies of Mercury and Venus, continue to the cooler, water bearing world of Earth and our close neighbour Mars. Beyond the asteroid belt we hit the majestic gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn and continuing on our voyage we finally reach the cold ice giants of Uranus and Neptune. The Solar system is our home and our starting point for understanding planetary systems and their architectures. Until the late 20th century these were the only planets known to us, however, in the last two decades, there has been enormous and rapid progress in the discovery and understanding of planets beyond our Solar system, dubbed Exoplanets. As we discover more and more of these exoplanets, and the planetary systems to which they belong, our understanding of planet formation and planetary architectures has changed and raised several questions. Where did these Jupiter-sized, gas giants orbiting their stars in as little as 3 days come from? What is a 'super Earth'? Will we find another habitable world? In this lecture we will answer some of these questions as we explore our very own Solar system, look at how we observe and discover Exoplanets, and examine how these other planetary systems differ to our own.

Presented by Dr Pablo A. Rosado on 18th February 2016.One of the greatest scientific discoveries of all times was achieved last week: the first detection of gravitational waves, emitted by a black hole binary. This discovery follows decades of intense work, and opens a new window to the Universe. This talk, for scientists and for non-scientists, is about black hole binaries, and the dawn of gravitational wave astronomy. This talk is about the curious romance of Alice and Bob. Nobody has heard it before, but we can speculate about what happened: how they were born, how they grew, how they first met, and how they finally became one forever. The true story is actually written in space-time, has been traveling across the Universe for more than a billion years, and is reaching Earth now. This is the story of two distant black holes merging into one. You may be wondering how we can hear it: is there really a way to listen to the voice of space-time? I will endeavour to answer this question, and explain how we attempt to discover new sounds of the Universe that we have never been able to listen to before. The talk will involve the loudest events in the Universe, like supernovae or collisions of neutron stars and black holes. In other words, I will speak about the dawn of gravitational wave astronomy, and pose that the mysterious love story of Alice and Bob might soon be finally heard, loud and clear.

Presented on 4 December 2015 by Dr Lisa Harvey-Smith. What is Dark Matter? How did the solar system form? Was Einstein right about the nature of gravity? Are we alone in the universe? To tackle these fascinating questions and more, an international consortium of eleven nations is currently designing the 'Square Kilometre Array' (SKA) telescope. Comprising thousands of radio receivers located in Africa and Australia, the SKA will be the world's most powerful radio telescope. It will revolutionise our understanding of the universe, from the first stars and galaxies formed after the Big Bang to the formation of planet Earth. In preparation for this mega-science project, the CSIRO has built the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope which is due to start early science operations next year. In this talk, CSIRO astronomer Dr. Lisa Harvey-Smith will reveal early results from ASKAP, explain the science and technology behind the telescope and describe many scientific mysteries it will tackle.

Presented by Dr Laura Wolz on Friday 23 October 2015. Radio telescopes have made numerous appearances in media and films due to their huge, mechanical appearances contrasting with the natural background. The gigantic size of the dishes are essential for observing cosmic objects in high resolution following the basic rule: the longer the wavelength, the bigger the dish. The construction efforts are worthwhile because radio waves can pass our atmosphere nearly unobscured and thus allow us to view the Universe whether it is sunny or cloudy. But what are we looking at? Every galaxy emits a wide range of radio waves, including our own Milky Way, allowing us to measure the positions of the galaxies in space. Radio waves also carry information about the interior of galaxies, namely their hydrogen content. Radio telescopes can be used as cartographers to map the cosmic landscape by their hydrogen emission. This allows us to see areas unobtainable through visible light and take a glimpse how the Universe looked when it was less than half of its age. We can use both, galaxy catalogues and cosmic maps, to explore how the Universe evolved to the present state. We can learn how space floated apart after the Big Bang, how gravity pulls structures together and how dark energy is mysteriously speeding up the expansion of the cosmos

Presented by Associate Professor Kim-Vy Tran on Friday 9 October 2015.Since Galileo's time, our ability to study the universe has been driven by our ability to collect light from distant objects. Due to tremendous technological advances in the last few decades, we can now study the most distant galaxies known in the universe. In addition to seeing fainter objects at higher resolution, we can also view the universe at many different wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio waves. I highlight the major advances that have been made with, e.g. the Keck telescopes and Hubble Space Telescope, and discuss why we need to continue pushing our limits by developing and building new observatories like the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Presented by Prof. Sarah Russell on 11 September 2015.2015 has been decreed the International Year of Light by the United Nations, and in recognition of this we expand our public astronomy lecture series from telescopes to microscopes. Our immune system protects us from infections and cancer when it works well, and caused autoimmune diseases when it goes wrong. Understanding how immunity is regulated has enabled the development of vaccines, immunosuppressive drugs, and cancer immunotherapies, but gaps in our understanding have prevented development of vaccines to all infectious agents, and mean many autoimmune diseases are still difficult to manage. By linking the expertise in physics at Swinburne with the immunological proficiency at PeterMac, we have developed novel approaches to watching the immune response as it unfolds. These studies are beginning to highlight new paradigms by which immunity is regulated. In this talk, I will describe the challenges and rewards of this interdisciplinary research, and highlight how our work reveals the fascinating mechanisms by which we tread the fine line between too much and too little immunity.

Presented by Prof. Roger Davies on 4 September 2015.Using exceptional data from Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered supermassive black holes, with masses ranging from millions to billions times the mass of the Sun, at the very centre of massive galaxies. Intriguingly the mass of this central black hole scales with many of the properties of the host galaxy, for example the total mass of the galaxy is about five hundred times the mass of the black hole. However the direct gravitational influence of the black hole extends to only a minute fraction of the volume of the galaxy (about one billionth of the total volume). So, how are these connections established? I will explore this question and reveal an unexpected twist in the story of galaxy evolution.