Professor Garret Cotter is an astronomer at the University of Oxford. With family roots near Birr, he was inspired by the Rosse Telescope from a very young age and then, growing up in Kilkeel, he had his first experience of professional astronomy doing work experience at Armagh Observatory in the 1980’s. He studied for a Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Cambridge and held postdoctoral positions at the Royal Greenwich observatory and the Cavendish Laboratory before taking up a lectureship at Oxford where he is now a Fellow of Exeter College.
Prof. Cotter will be delivering a public talk on Wednesday 4 September at Armagh Planetarium. The talk will look at “Mysteries of black holes and the big bang – the most powerful events in the Universe” and begins at 7pm sharp.
The most powerful events that occur in nature cover a vast range of cosmic scales: from pulsars that are a few kilometres across, to merging black holes emitting gravitational waves, through quasars and blazars that can be millions of light years in size, all the way up to the energy stored in the vacuum of space itself, that propels the expansion of the universe. All of these phenomena present astronomers with great mysteries. Our investigations tell us parts of the story of the Universe itself, and about our place in it (along with providing an impetus to develop many new technologies that have great value in everyday life). Prof. Cotter will give a brief tour of some of the highlights of recent research, with particular focus on some topics where Irish astronomers have played leading roles.
Enjoy a special fulldome show after the talk at 8pm. Tickets can be purchased by clicking here.
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