Events

New observations of black holes

A public lecture by renowned mathematical physicist, Edward Witten

For decades, black holes seemed almost in the realm of science fiction rather than science, and for decades more, though astronomers gained strong evidence for their existence, this evidence was generally quite indirect. But in the last few years, our observations of black holes have become far more direct and incisive, through observations of gravitational waves from colliding black holes as well as direct imaging of the environment of a supermassive black hole in a relatively nearby galaxy.  In this talk, I will give an introduction to these new observations.

Edward Witten is an American theoretical physicist and professor of mathematical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is undoubtedly one of the most influential mathematical physicists of our time. His work on understanding the fundamental interactions in nature has gone far beyond physics and impacted pure mathematics in an unprecedented way. 

Professor Witten has published more than 300 scientific papers and in 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union, awarded for his 1981 proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity.  He appeared in the TIME magazine's list of 100 Most Influential People of 2001 and became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012.

Celebrating 25 years of the Marsden Fund Te Pūtea Rangahau a Marsden Dr Pauline Harris will present on Maramataka, or Māori traditional calendars, and how they contain a wealth of ecological, environmental and cultural knowledge, in addition to celestial knowledge.

The Matariki cluster which signifies the Māori New Year, Puanga (Rigel) and other stars are key components of maramataka. But there are other significant coinciding tohu, or signs, especially environmental and ecological indicators, that are important in traditional calendar systems.

Indigenous communities around the world, including Māori, have observed that these indicators are changing and have attributed this to pollution, human encroachment and climate change. As scientists endeavour to predict and mitigate climate change, traditional ecological knowledge is being sought to add a complementary set of information to inform predictions and policies.

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Hear about leading New Zealand research to advance a new form of gene therapy that's exclusively targeting cancer cells.

Research led by Professor David Ackerley, director of Victoria University of Wellington’s Biotechnology programme, is helping to advance a new form of gene therapy that exclusively targets cancer cells.

A key goal of this therapy is a more targeted treatment that results in fewer side effects for cancer patients. To achieve this goal, David and his team have engineered enzymes that can transform a relatively safe and non-toxic compound (a “pro-drug”) into a drug that is highly toxic to cancer cells. The core idea is that genes encoding these enzymes can be delivered to cancer cells using viruses or bacteria that are only able to replicate in tumours.

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