"Are we alone in the Universe" ~ Professor Brad Gibson

Have we been visited before?  Are they out there watching… listening… studying us?  And if they are out there, where might ‘there’ be?  Our Milky Way Galaxy can be a nasty and inhospitable place for life to develop… but, all is not lost… there are some very unique and special places hidden amongst this hostile environment where the building blocks for life might just be right for extraterrestrial life to flourish.  In this lecture, Dr Brad Gibson will examine the evidence for and against the existence of extraterrestrai life, and walk you through the associated good, bad, and ugly corners of our Galaxy.

Personal Bio: An Aussie-Canadian transplant, up until his retirement early this year, Professor Brad Gibson served as Head of Physics & Maths and Director & Founder of the E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics, at the University of Hull, Chair in Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire, and Deputy Head of School at Swinburne University in Australia. Brad’s team was responsible for first defining the Milky Way’s Galactic Habitable Zone (named a Top 10 News Story of the Year by National Geographic), determining the expansion rate of the Universe (for which their team was awarded the Gruber Prize in Cosmology), and building the world’s first Liquid Mirror Telescope Observatory.  Brad’s 1000+ outreach events over the past 7 years have reached two million people around the world, including 70,000+ students at more than 100 schools and colleges throughout the UK.  His commitment to widening participation from underrepresented groups, and improving the career prospects of physics students, led to his “Changing Face of Physics” campaign being named Best Practice in the Country by the UK’s Equality Challenge Unit.