Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
Disclaimer: This lecture will be delivered online as a live webinar.
In this lecture, particle physicist Dr Harry Cliff will explore the idea of a multiverse.
The idea that our universe is just one of a vast number has been growing increasingly prominent in physics over the past decade. In this lecture, particle physicist Harry Cliff will explore the reasons some physicists have become convinced that we live in a multiverse, why others find the idea repugnant, and whether experiments will ever be able to tell us one way or the other.
Dr Harry Cliff is Science Museum Fellow in the High Energy Physics group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is a particle physicist working on the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN near Geneva. LHCb is searching for signs of new particles that could help scientists understand some of the big unsolved problems in fundamental physics including the nature of dark matter and why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. Harry Cliff’s research focuses on studying ultra-rare decays of exotic particles called B-mesons, which can be affected by new particles or forces that lie outside our current best theory, the Standard Model.
He holds a joint post between Cambridge and the Science Museum in London, and has curated two major exhibitions: Collider (2013) and The Sun (2018). His interests lie in science communication, and his many public speaking engagements include TED talks, lectures at the Royal Institution, and talks on television, radio and at festivals, including Kaleidoscope and Gravity Fields, the World Science Festival in Brisbane and Wilderness.
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