Upcoming Events

ATLAS and The Large Hadron Collider

Andy Parker is a Professor of High Energy Physics at Cambridge University,
with over 160 publications on aspects of particle physics. His current
research interests involve experiments to reveal new physics in the
Tera-electron-volt energy regime. He is a founder of the ATLAS experiment
for the Large Hadron Collider, and for 6 years he was the project leader for
the ATLAS Inner Detector, the most complex detector system so far created at
CERN. He is also involved in large-scale distributed computing grids, used
for various scientific projects. He was awarded the Pilkington Prize for
excellence in teaching in 1997.

The talk will discuss the latest status and results from the ATLAS
experiment at the LHC. Data-taking started in November 2009, and is planned
to continue for at least 15 years. Early results will focus on measurements
of known processes at the TeV energy scale, such as quark-antiquark
production, and studies of the weak interaction. A major goal will be to
discover, or rule out, the Higgs boson, a key component of the "Standard
Model" of particle interactions. The talk will also discuss the more exotic
physics being investigated, such as extra space dimensions, quantum-sized
black holes, and supersymmetry.

UFOs: Fact or fantasy?

According to one estimate, around 100 UFOs are sighted worldwide every 24 hours – that’s one every 15 minutes. What’s causing all these reports? Are they, as believers claim, evidence that we are being visited by aliens from other planets? Or is there  a more prosaic explanation? This hard-hitting talk by Ian Ridpath, astronomy writer and UFO sceptic, traces the growth of the flying saucer myth since the first sighting in 1947, and demonstrates some of the most common causes of UFO reports. The talk will discuss the implication of formerly top-secret government documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, and will end with Ian’s first-hand account of his own researches into the Rendlesham Forest incident, a major event outside a US Air Force base at Woodbridge in Suffolk, still widely regarded as among the best UFO cases ever.

Ian is a science writer and found fame for his investigation into the 'Rendlesham Forest Incident', often called 'Britain's Roswell'. For further reading on the subject Ian's website provides a good starting point to find more out about him and his talks. Evan Davis of the Today programme also recently covered the subject and went to Rendlesham Forest with Ian.

Regenerative medicine for aging: can it be comprehensive enough?

It may seem premature to be discussing the elimination of human aging as a cause of death, when so little progress has yet been made in even postponing it. However, two facts undermine this assessment. The first is that aging happens throughout our lives but only causes ill-health after middle age: this shows that we can postpone that ill-health without knowing how to prevent aging completely, but instead by molecular and cellular repair. The second is that the typical rate of subsequent, incremental refinement of big technological breakthroughs is usually fast enough (so long as public enthusiasm for them is strong) to change those technologies almost beyond recognition within a natural human lifespan. In this talk I will explain, first, why therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining lifespan of typical 60-year-olds may well arrive within the next few decades, and, second, why those who benefit from those therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and will thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research, the world’s highest-impact peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. He received his BA and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000 respectively. His original field was computer science, and he did research in the private sector for six years in the area of software verification before switching to biogerontology in the mid-1990s. His research interests encompass the characterisation of all the accumulating and eventually pathogenic molecular and cellular side-effects of metabolism (“damage”) that constitute mammalian aging and the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage. He has developed a possibly comprehensive plan for such repair, termed Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), which breaks aging down into seven major classes of damage and identifies detailed approaches to addressing each one. A key aspect of SENS is that it can potentially extend healthy lifespan without limit, even though these repair processes will probably never be perfect, as the repair only needs to approach perfection rapidly enough to keep the overall level of damage below pathogenic levels. Dr. de Grey has termed this required rate of improvement of repair therapies “longevity escape velocity”. Dr. de Grey is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association, and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organisations.

Simon Blackburn

The subject of Simon's talk will be announced closer to the time.

Simon Blackburn is the Professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Trinity College, and a Research Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. From 1969 to 1990 he was Tutorial Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at many places in the USA and worldwide. His books include: Reason and Prediction, 1973, Spreading the Word 1984, Essays in Quasi-Realism 1993, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 1994, Ruling Passions 1998, Think 1999, Being Good 2001, Lust 2004, Truth: A Guide 2005, Plato’s Republic 2006, How to Read Hume 2008, The Big Questions of Philosophy, 2009. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Believing by Numbers

Edd works in astronomy at the University of Portsmouth, trying to handle the large amounts of data from some of the current and upcoming surveys of the sky. He's worked with surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and on the 'citizen science' project Galaxy Zoo which lead to the discovery of 'Hanny's Voorwerp'. As someone in the field of cosmology, he's in the somewhat unusual situation of often having to tell people that most of the universe is actually invisible and intangible and that it's perfectly rational to believe that.

Having spent too much time worrying about how to turn data into answers to questions, he talks about the mathematics behind thinking skeptically (but not so many equations that you can't follow him after a pint or two). What should we mean when we say we believe something? How do you know when you have enough evidence for your beliefs, and when should you change your mind when faced with facts that don't fit your preconceptions? And what does this all mean when we're faced with the task of assessing whether that claimed psychic really can do what they say?

Skeptical Activism & The Quacklash

Simon is an active campaigner against nonsense. Using the ASA, Trading Standards, other regulatory bodies and even gaining help from MPs, his campaigns have helped shut down dodgy allergy test services, prevented traditional chinese medicine salesmen from claiming to cure cancer and exposed psychic scams.

His largest involvement in a campaign, coined the "Quacklash" by Jack of Kent involved almost 600 separate letters being sent to trading standards to report claims to treat childhood diseases with a back rub. 60 of the letters gained 500 signatories. Further complaints were issued with the General Chiropractic Council.

Simon will be explaining the techniques he's used to fight woo, what works and what doesn't and tell stories about some of the crazy nonsense he's encountered along the way.

Simon runs Leicester Skeptics in the Pub, blogs at http://adventuresinnonsense.blogspot.com and writes a skeptical column in the Leicester Mercury. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Simon_Perry.