Any dates/venues of lectures in the UK?

[goldsax]

hi,
studying BSc astronomy/physics 3rd year in the UK on part time basis.
i am a senior cosmetic dentist by profession, so have limited exposure to what lectures are available around the country.
any guidance please?
thanks raj

 

[marcus]

There is a website called "hyperspace" that lists upcoming conferences and workshops (some in UK, some elsewhere). Organizers of conferences etc can post announcements at "hyperspace" if they wish. It's like a community bulletin board for cosmology and gravity research. (anything related to General Relativity, gravitational waves, quantum gravity etc.)
I've found it useful and periodically visit the site to seek what's new.
I don't know to what extent it would fit your needs, but I will get a link.

http://hyperspace.aei.mpg.de/category/Conferences/

The way you get the link is you google "hyperspace aei" because the bulletin board is maintained by the Einstein Institute (MPI-Potsdam)

The listings are in reverse chron order, so you scroll down to find the ones coming soon. There is usually a conference website link given by the bulletin board, so you can find out more detail.

I don't see anything upcoming in the UK, currently, but you can get more of an idea if you click on PREVIOUS, down at the bottom. they will have announcements of meetings that already occurred and some will be in the UK

 

[marcus]

For example, I clicked on "previous conferences" at the "hyperspace aei" website and found several in the UK that were held earlier this year:

http://hyperspace.aei.mpg.de/category/Conferences/page/3/

From Classical to Quantum GR: Applications to cosmology, Brighton, UK
This short Graduate School which will take place on April 23-25 2014 will be the second of a series started in 2013 at the University of Sussex. From Classical to Quantum GR aims at bringing together students from high energy physics, cosmology and astrophysics to discuss the state of the art in classical and quantum gravity. The series started in 2013 as a COST school and focussed on applications to black holes. The 2014 edition will focus on applications to cosmology. Our sponsors this year are SEPnet and the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex.

We have planned the following lectures:

- Inflation and Higgs inflation, Fedor Bezrukov (University of Connecticut)
- Quantum Gravity imprints in the CMB, Claus Kiefer (University of Cologne)
- Quantum Gravity Phenomenology, Sabine Hossenfelder (Nordita, Stockholm)
- Review of LambdaCDM cosmology, David Seery (University of Sussex)
- more speakers are currently being contacted
============
BritGrav 14, University of Cambridge, UK
The 14th BritGrav (British Gravity) Meeting will be held on 31 March – 1 April 2014 at the University of Cambridge in St Catharine’s College.

The meeting covers all areas of classical and quantum gravity, including astrophysics, cosmology, mathematical general relativity, gravitational wave data analysis and instrumentation. It is intended to bring together the entire gravitational research community to further collaboration and allow young researchers to showcase their work. (No conference fee. Annual event.)
=============
Cosmology and the Constants of Nature, DAMTP, Cambridge
Monday, 17 March 2014 at 09:00 – Wednesday, 19 March 2014 at 15:00 (GMT)

The Constants of Nature are quantities, whose numerical values we know with the greatest experimental accuracy – but about the rationale for those values, we have the greatest ignorance. We might also ask if they are indeed constant in space and time, and investigate whether their values arise at random or are uniquely determined by some deep theory.
This mini-series of talks is part of the joint Oxford-Cambridge programme on the Philosophy of Cosmology which aims to introduce philosophers of physics to fundamental problems in cosmology and associated areas of high-energy physics.

The talks are aimed at philosophers of physics but should also be of interest to a wide range of cosmologists. Speakers will introduce the physical constants that define the standard model of particle physics and cosmology together with the data that determine them, describe observational programmes that test the constancy of traditional ‘constants’, including the cosmological constant, and discuss how self-consistent theories of varying constants can be formulated.

Speakers:
John Barrow, University of Cambridge
John Ellis, King’s College London
Pedro Ferreira, University of Oxford
Joao Magueijo, Imperial College, London
Thanu Padmanabhan, IUCAA, Pune
Martin Rees, University of Cambridge
John Webb, University of New South Wales, Sydney

(Registration is free!)
===============
More info: external link
Contact: Dr David Sloan (djs228[AT]cam.ac.uk)
Infinities and Cosmology, Cambridge, UK (March 18-21, 2013)
The Infinities and Cosmology mini-series will be held in Cambridge from March 18-21. Talks will be aimed at a broad audience with interests in philosophy as well as physics.

Confirmed speakers include:
Anthony Aguirre, University of California Santa Cruz
Mihalis Dafermos, University of Cambridge / Princeton University
Michael R Douglas, Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook University
George Ellis, University of Cape Town
Mark Hogarth, University of Cambridge
Simon Saunders, University of Oxford

Three days of talks will be followed by a one-day workshop. Registration is open, and practical details can be found at the URL below.

Posted on behalf of the organizing committee, John Barrow, Jeremy Butterfield and David Sloan, also on behalf of the rest of the joint Oxford-Cambridge Establishing the Philosophy of Cosmology project.
=================

All this information is directly from hyperspace.aei
but each event has its own website, and hyperspace provides the links, so you can click on the link to find out more.

It seems that the joint Oxford-Cambridge project has at least one 3-day workshop per year, which is free, and fairly broad audience (philosophers AND cosmologists, so it can't be too technical).
they had a very interesting one in July 2013 that curiously does NOT seem to have been announced on hyperspace. It was called "Cosmology and Quantum Foundations".
Carlo Rovelli and Max Tegmark each gave a couple of talks and there was a lot of Q&A discussion.
The talks are on YOUTUBE.

Google "rovelli cosmology quantum oxford" , that should do it. Watch some of the YouTubes. There are hour lectures. It will give an idea. The Oxford Cambridge project on cosmology and philosophy alternates venue, some in Ox and some in Cam.