Physfest 2024

Condensed matter talk by Dr Felix Flicker.

Imagine you had a crystal which lit upon your command: magic must be at work, and you must surely be a wizard. Yet these days such an action is mundane: LEDs are crystals, and their practical technology lights our streets and our homes.

The modern name for wizardry is condensed matter physics. It is the study of the world around us - the states of matter, how they emerge from the quantum realm, and how they can manifest exotic particles which cannot exist in the vacuum of space. It is one of science's best-kept secrets: a third of all physicists work on it, yet its story has rarely been told.

Join Dr Felix Flicker as he introduces the magic of condensed matter physics, from the subtle spells that conjure crystals from chaos, to creating new particles which have never before been seen.

Particle physics talk by Professor Jonas Rademacker.

Many of the Standard Model’s predictions have been tested with impressive accuracy, such as the existence of the Higgs particle and its couplings to other particles. Nice. However, the Standard Model also predicts that the universe should have annihilated shortly after its creation. Not nice. Not accurate. This presentation is about how we address this problem with high precision measurements at the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Astrophysics talk by Dr Natasha Maddox.

New telescopes, able to see fainter things and greater distances, allow us to make new discoveries. I will introduce the MeerKAT radio interferometer, South Africa's precursor to the Square Kilometre Array telescope. With headquarters in the UK, and telescopes in Southern Africa and Western Australia, the SKA brings together astronomers from around the world. I will talk about the telescopes, and my ongoing research, including describing some new discoveries.

Discussion with Dr Sudan Paramesvaran, Dr Giulia Rubino, Dr Tony Short, Dr Natasa Vasiljevic, Dr Hannah Wakeford & Dr Shuqiu Wang