When 10,000 people turned up for a lecture on cosmology
Actually it was called “a show” but it filled the SSE Arena at Wembley in north-west London on Sunday evening as people of all ages arrived for the sell-out performance. The show was titled “Universal Adventures In Space And Time World Tour 2019” and delivered by Professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester and television fame with some support from guest Brian Ince.
The visuals were stunning with huge screens showing photographs of planets and galaxies taken from recent satellite launches and visualisations of various galactic phenomena such as a black hole and a supernova.
Cox is an assured and fluent presenter who spoke without any notes or aids. I feel that his first part explanations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the nature of black holes were challenging to understand, but his part two expositions on the creation of the universe and the chances of life beyond our Earth were more intelligible.
Cox managed to convey powerfully just how small we are in relation to the universe as a whole and indeed suggested that it is widely accepted now that there are multiple universes, while emphasising just how special we are in being atoms that can think about atoms and possible unique in our universe. We have a great responsibility to live wisely on this small blue dot we call home.