Irish Mensa Lecture and Discussion: Oumuamua - Our First Interstellar Visitor

In 2017, the Solar System was visited by an object named 'Oumuamua, which came from another star. The unusual properties of this first interstellar visitor led some to suggest it may be an alien spacecraft - but the truth is that its oddness is already teaching us lessons about how solar systems form.

This lecture also considers the prospects of discovering more unusual objects in the Solar System, and what we might do about asteroids that threaten the Earth.

Our Speaker: Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College. His research ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He is Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, The Crowd and the Cosmos.

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NOTE: This is a free virtual event, with no need to register. Simply click on the Zoom link to join the meeting.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81935209536?pwd=KTm1JbGwLSOWOiuMLKoHgNf32157Lc.1
Meeting ID: 819 3520 9536
Passcode: 850078

For more information, contact Mary Reilly at mary@craftcottage.ie.