Astroblog: Fred Watson and Sean Williams at the Gov

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Fred Watson and Sean Williams at the Gov

Image Credit: C.Fluke/Swinburne University

So I went to Science Outside the Square with various non-mature hominids in tow. Despite the Royal Institutes weird email alert system which is guaranteed to send all emails into the spam folder, the Governor Hindmarsh was packed.

And you could see why. Fred Watson (the famous telescope guy) and Sean Williams (the Science Fiction Guy) were terrific. Individually they were witty and entertaining, together they sparked off each other, throwing out sparkling ideas into an enthralled audience.

Galaxies featured a lot, Fred showed an animation of the The Six-Degree Field Galaxy Survey (you can read about it here ), a stunning 3D fly-through of the galaxies you can see in just 6 degrees of sky. that's a patch of sky you can cover with your outstretched hand. Sean talked about colliding galaxies and their merging black holes. I got to ask a quaetion (what was their favourite explanation for the Fermi Paradox), and got to chate breifly aftewards (acting like a bubling fan-boy).

I thought it might have been a bit "talky-talky" for the non-mature hominids, but they were as fascinated as I.

Labels: science, science matters

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:06 am

Comments:

Sounds fascinating, I wish I knew about this before hand!
Is there a mailing list for this kind of talk?

# posted by

Dylan : 9:56 am

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# posted by

sheldon : 4:35 pm

G'Day Dylan

Yes, there is a mailing list for Science Outside the Square.

Send an email to info@riaustralia.org.au requesting to be put on the Science Outside The Square mailing list.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 10:23 pm

Well, what is their favorite take on Fermi's paradox???

# posted by

RBH : 4:45 pm