Why the cosmos will get you in the end

Date: 10:00 am | Sunday 9 October 2011

Venue: RiAus Auditorium

Through triumphs and tragedies, through moments of stunning achievement and of terrible disaster, the stars have shone down on human history unchanging and aloof.

Or so we thought.

But in the modern view of astronomy, the Universe is a dynamic and evolving place, in which stars streak across the sky at high speeds, disappear and re-appear again, and sometimes even catastrophically explode. What’s more, the cosmos is not some distant canvas that we watch as detached observers, but is a violent and dangerous beast that has the power to wipe out all life on Earth with almost no warning. Astronomers are still only beginning to appreciate the true scope of the dramatic forces that drive the Universe’s evolution.