Bollington SciBar: From the Antikythera Mechanism to the Square Kilometer Array

As modern humans we tend to think we are clever, and each generation typically thinks it’s more intelligent than those before it. So it can be a shock to discover civilizations existing thousands of years ago possessed highly advanced knowledge and technologies capable of measuring the physical world.

The Antikythera mechanism is an astonishing Greek device that was lost for more than 2,000 years and shows we’ve have been measuring the physical world for a long time, so what’s changed?  What is all the hype about?  In a word, it’s connectivity.  We can now connect all of these disparate systems and literally instrument the entire world.

Professor Danielle George will discuss her work on solving one of the 14 World Engineering Grand Challenges and how she makes it part of her mission to show how creative engineering is. She will discuss her projects in radio astronomy, farming and aerospace and tell us about the smartest machine she knows.

Talk begins 6.30pm prompt.