Royal Institution Lectures

Join pioneering physicist Jon Butterworth on a journey into the world of the unseen in search of atoms and quarks, electrons and neutrinos, the forces that shape the universe and the mysterious territory currently being explored at the energy frontier.

While the obesity epidemic is a contemporary problem, undoubtedly due to changes in our lifestyle and in the types of food we eat, differences in our genetic make-up mean some of us eat more than others. Join geneticist and neuroscientist Giles Yeo as he discusses how we use genetics as a tool to understand the biological variation in appetite control.

For something that is so good for us, swearing gets a bad rap. Science writer Emma Byrne will explore the close connection between bad language and our emotions. She will shed light on the latest in the neuroscience and origins of swearing.

Consciousness might not be a black and white issue. Join neuroscientist Adrian Owen to find out about a pioneering new technique that allows doctors to communicate with people thought to be lost in persistent vegetative states.

Last September, the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens spacecraft mission ended its 20 years in space by burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere (on purpose). Hear from Michele Dougherty, one of the mission's lead scientists, as she describes some surprising discoveries made during the orbital tour at Saturn, including water vapor plumes at the small moon Enceladus and implications this has for potential habitability.

Dr Frankenstein aimed to create new life from inanimate parts. But how did life first arise on Earth? Join Nick Lane in conversation with Phil Ball as they discuss the latest ideas, from warm ponds to space rocks and hydrothermal vents.

Quantum technology has the potential to revolutionise whole fields of computing; from cryptography to molecular modelling. But how do quantum computers work? Join leading experts to untangle the quantum computing hype, at this event supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Andrew Hanson will elaborate on his own area of work – colour measurement. Colour informs, influences consumer choices, warns us and comforts us. As with every aspect of life, it needs to be measured to ensure good communication and confidence in manufacturing processes for a diverse range of goods from pills to paints. But how do we ascribe numbers to a human perception which is incredibly versatile and variable? The challenge is enormous and human colour perception science is still a lively topic today. Be warned! This demonstration talk will contain surprises – there is a lot more to colour than meets the eye.

You’ve heard of smart phones, smart meters, smart watches… Well now it’s the turn of smart materials. In the future, solid objects will react, sense, change and move according to their surroundings. This won’t be a result of clever robotics or electronics, but rather the fundamental properties of the stuff itself. In years to come, we will be living in self-regulating houses, riding self-fixing bicycles, and driving on self-illuminating roads, all thanks to these so-called ‘smart materials’. These are metals, plastics, fabrics and fluids that react to the outside world without any human involvement, and they promise to change the way we live. In this talk, award-winning materials scientist and engineer Dr Anna Ploszajski will show you the smart materials that will make the material world around us smarter. Expect to see matter doing things you’ve never seen it do before!

Natural history museums are magical places. They inspire awe and wonder in the natural world and help us understand our place within the animal kingdom. Behind the scenes, many of them are also undertaking world-changing science with their collections. But they are places for people, made by people. We might like to consider them logical places, centred on facts, but they can’t tell all the facts – there isn’t room. Similarly, they can’t show all the animals. And there are reasons behind what goes on display and what gets left in the storeroom.

The ability to remember personally experienced events in vivid, multisensory detail makes an immensely important contribution to our lives, allowing us to re-live each moment of a previous encounter and providing us with the store of precious memories that form the building blocks of who we are. Such remembering involves reactivating sensory and perceptual features of an event, and the thoughts and feelings we had when the event occurred, integrating them into a conscious first-person experience. It allows us to make judgments about the things we remember, such as distinguishing events that actually occurred from those we might have imagined or been told about. Although a great deal is known about the cognitive and neural processes that enable us to recall a word list, for example, considerably less is known about the processes underlying the subjective experience of remembering. Drawing on inspiration from philosophers and novelists, Jon Simons will consider the latest evidence during his Discourse.

The Large Hadron Collider switched on in 2015 at the highest energy ever, re-creating the conditions of the universe as they were just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, and what physicists are learning so far is that our universe seems to be … extremely odd. But to know exactly how odd it is we need to build a bigger collider, to get even closer to the moment of the Big Bang. How big do we need to go? Join particle physicist James Beacham as he explores what we would likely learn from a hadron collider around the moon, such as whether we live in a multiverse — and what this means for society.

Join radio frequency engineer, TV presenter and former Christmas Lecturer Danielle George as she will discuss both the ALMA and SKA telescopes and how these pioneering machines will generate huge amounts of data that will help us explore our continuous curiosity of the Universe.

Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli will unravel this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves.

Could an artificial intelligence predict a crime before it happens? Will we ever truly trust a machine? What new technology might be used against us in the future? Our expert panel will open our eyes and try to allay our fears regarding the future of crime.

The brain is the most complex structure in the Universe, and neurologists must puzzle out life-changing diagnoses from the tiniest of clues. In this talk, Suzanne O’Sullivan will follow the trail of her patients’ symptoms: feelings of déjà vu lead us to a damaged hippocampus; spitting and fidgeting to the right temporal lobe; fear of movement to a brain tumour and a missed heartbeat to the limbic system.

Technology is becoming more and more advanced but cannot prosper on its own, the human brain and the experience that humans have is not easily taught, from removing bias to introducing emotional intelligence. Join a panel of experts as they discuss how machines, humans and processes are coming together to create powerful new insights.

Join mathematician David Sumpter on an algorithm-strewn journey to the dark side of mathematics. He will investigate the equations that analyse us, influence us and will (maybe) become like us.

The complexity of the Universe emerges from several deep laws and a handful of fundamental constants that fix its shape, scale, and destiny. Join Peter Atkins for a revolutionary weaving together of the fundamental ideas of physics, looking at how the laws of Nature can spring from very little. Or arguably from nothing at all.

Energy use worldwide continues to soar and buildings are responsible for a large percentage of this use. Join new Royal Institution Director Shaun Fitzgerald as he will reveal the surprising physics of hot air, and how using his research led him to revolutionise building ventilation with dramatic reductions in energy usage.

Drawing upon her cutting-edge research, award-winning neuroscientist, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore will explain what happens inside the adolescent brain, and what her team’s experiments have revealed about our behaviour, and how we relate to each other and our environment. Our adolescence provides a lens through which we can see ourselves anew. It is fundamental to how we invent ourselves.

How could LSD and psilocybin help with mental health, palliative care and addictive behaviours? What was the point of a psilocybin mushroom evolving the way that it did? Michael Pollan will explore the “second wave” of international research and discuss what psychedelic drugs may teach us about the mind, human consciousness and their potential effect on our future lives.

Neuroscientist Morten Kringelbach will discuss radical new brain imaging technology, and army doctor Alexander Wieck Fjaeldstad will describe how smells trigger memories to reveal what is going on inside the brains of people affected by psychological trauma, head injury and PTSD

Quantum physics has a reputation as one of the most obscure and impenetrable subjects in science. Philip Ball will talk about what quantum theory really means – and what it doesn’t – and how its counterintuitive principles create the world we experience.

On the 100th anniversary of the deadly Spanish flu, Peter Piot will discuss the ever-present risk of another global pandemic in our increasingly interconnected world. He will comment on the shortcomings of the global response to the West African Ebola outbreak and, drawing on his experience combating HIV/AIDS, he will highlight the need to focus on prevention and preparedness for future health threats.

For thousands of years, mathematicians have used the timeless art of logic to see the world more clearly. Today, truth is buried under soundbites and spin, and seeing clearly is more important than ever. In this talk, Eugenia Cheng will show how anyone can think like a mathematician to understand what people are really telling us – and how we can argue back. Taking a careful scalpel to politics, privilege, sexism and dozens of other real-world situations, she will teach us how to find clarity without losing nuance.

Will there forever be stars in the sky? Will humanity roam the cosmos for eternity? What does the future hold for our Universe? Join us for a journey through space and time, from galactic collisions and hyperactive black holes, on to the death of the last star.

How does the brain think? And more importantly, can we replicate thinking with a man-made device? Zdenka Kuncic will provide a tantalising glimpse into the possibility of synthetic intelligence in the not-too-distant future.

Anita Sengupta is a hyperloop engineer and former NASA rocket scientist, working at the extremes of her field, from studying quantum physics in the space station to building 1000km/h hyperloop transport systems. Join Anita to hear the story of how understanding the complexity of the Universe, from the subatomic scale to dark matter and dark energy, can help us develop the technology of the future.

How do you engineer the fastest mode of transport on Earth? What does it take to turn a hundred year old idea into a reality? Join Anita Sengupta, Rocket Scientist and Research Professor from the University of Southern California, as she discusses the work and creativity that goes into the Hyperloop, a new form of high-speed transportation that can best be described as space travel on the ground that travels at 1000km/h to life. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.

We like to think of ourselves as exceptional beings, but are we really any more special than other animals? Humans are the slightest of twigs on a single family tree that encompasses four billion years, a lot of twists and turns, and a billion species. All of those organisms are rooted in a single origin, with a common code that underwrites our existence. This paradox - that our biology is indistinct from all life, yet we consider ourselves to be special - lies at the heart of who we are. In an original and entertaining tour of life on Earth, Adam Rutherford will explore how many of the things once considered to be exclusively human are not: we are not the only species that communicates, makes tools, utilises fire, or has sex for reasons other than to make new versions of ourselves. Evolution has, however, allowed us to develop our culture to a level of complexity that outstrips any other observed in nature.

Blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, has an almost unlimited number of applications beyond finance. From digital identities to kidney transplants, blockchain technology solves the problem of intermediary trust between parties without a central authority. But how does the blockchain work? And has its usefulness been overstated? Join John Domingue and Sajida Zouarhi to find out more about this exciting technology and see how it is being implemented in real-world situations, in this joint event with the Embassy of France.

The V&A is a museum with a rich history. From its Victorian roots in the Design School Movement of the 1830s to its collections from the 1851 Great Exhibition, its establishment as the Museum of Manufactures in 1852 to the foundation stone laid by Queen Victoria in 1899. But the past doesn’t insure us against the future. Tristram Hunt will explore how museums can retain their relevance and purpose in our contemporary age. For an institution enmeshed in collections going back 5,000 years, the V&A is as focused on curating the future as preserving the past.

How do you create smart materials capable of healing bone, restoring kidney function or reversing the onset of diabetes? Can our own stem cells be used to heal us? Join us as we explore these questions, and more, with experts within regenerative medicine.

Science should be for everyone, but not everyone gets the representation that they deserve. What does that mean for society? Join Alex Lathbridge and a panel of experts as they explore the work of prominent Black scientists from the past and how experts with new experiences are changing the face of contemporary science as we know it. Exploring how lack of diversity has affected everything from AI to genetics, our experts will show how researchers are combating years of bias in the most-cutting edge research.

We've all heard of 'diversity' but what does it mean in practice? How can teams in business and research use the idea of diversity to produce better results? Currently only about 12-15% of the engineers who are building the internet and its software are women. As AI and Machine Learning is based on the data you feed it and how you design it, we are at risk of exacerbating existing biases if we do not ensure that diverse data sets are included from design In this event, experts in the field of science and philosophy will come together to explore the theme of diversity of perspective covering diversity of people, data, models and mindset. We will use the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to show the increasing complexity and relevance of having a diverse outlook.

Could particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider really help to cure cancer? An advanced form of radiotherapy, proton beam therapy enables tumours to be targeted with greater precision, reducing the collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue. With two NHS proton beam centres set to open this year, physicist Simon Jolly sheds light on this cutting-edge technique and the technology needed to deliver it.

What makes you the way you are—and what makes each of us different from everyone else? Join Kevin Mitchell as he traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains. Deftly guiding us through important new research, including his own groundbreaking work, he explains how variations in the way our brains develop before birth strongly influence our psychology and behaviour throughout our lives, shaping our personality, intelligence, sexuality, and even the way we perceive the world.

Through natural selection, animals have evolved exquisite adaptations for highly efficient movement through the air, in water and across the ground. Careful analyses of the adaptations of flying, swimming and walking animals are beginning to deliver substantial improvements in the efficiency of a new generation of robotic vehicles. Join zoologist and inventor Adrian Thomas as he showcases his work mimicking nature, from a drone that's inspired by a dragonfly to a boat with a fin rather than a propeller.

Were your school achievements predicable at birth? Would you be the same person today if you'd been raised by another family? The nature vs nurture debate is evolving, and with the new era of personal genomics and DNA testing kits, it's more important than ever to find out what our DNA can really tell us about who we are. Join Robert Plomin as he explores the implications of the DNA revolution and what it means to discover that our genes are the single most powerful influence on what makes you, you.

Once you know how to see them, numbers are all around us – buried in the dimensions of buildings and encoding the data on our favourite gadgets. They’re a beautiful system of patterns and codes, but also an essential tool that can guide our daily decisions, change our behaviour, and even predict the future—if we can just learn how to use them right. Join Bobby Seagull as he illuminates the world of numbers and brings his infectious enthusiasm to everything from the mystery of magic numbers, the improbability of probability, the right number of friends to have, and how prime numbers control everything from credit card encryption to cicada hibernation habits.

We take the advance of science as given. But how does science really work? Who decides what the public gets to hear about? Are there too few scientists in the world or too many? Answering these questions and more, Jeremy Baumberg will shed light on a cutthroat and tightly tensioned enterprise that even scientists themselves often don't fully understand, and suggest how we might intervene to resuscitate science.

With limited access to natural resources, scientists must develop new ways to reduce and reuse what we already have. Join Bert Weckhuysen as he explores how chemistry is being used to create waste-powered transport and why it is so difficult to convert carbon dioxide into fuels and chemicals. This event is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

As Bonfire night approaches, join Chemistry teacher and science demonstrations virtuoso Andrew Szydlo for an unforgettable evening exploring the chemistry of something seemingly rather ordinary: coal. From its initial discovery, its use as the fuel of the industrial revolution, to some of the more interesting and exciting compounds we can obtain from coal, Andrew will take us on an illuminating tour of this intriguing rock. Expect lots of flashes, smokes and smells, exciting colourful chemistry, and plenty of flames along the way!