'First light'

Tonight, Professor Jim Dunlop from the University of Edinburgh was giving the Lovell Lecture at Jodrell Bank, entitled 'First Light'. I wasn't only touched that the Minx found out about the lecture or that she bought the tickets for it but also that she came along with me. (This is not one of her primary areas of interest.)

As part of the Lovell Lecture, you can also have a meal at Jodrell Bank beforehand, which we opted to do. Served in the café in the visitors' centre, I didn't have particularly high expectations of it but the food turned out to be excellent. They even served wine :-) 

Once we'd eaten, we went over to the building where Professor Dunlop delivered the lecture. He turned out to be a witty and engaging Scotsman, who did a great job of making his topic interesting and digestible. I won't try and regurgitate or summarise it here but it was mainly concerned with how we can look back through time to the first few hundred million years of the universe by looking at light that has been travelling across space for all that time.

At the end of the lecture, I found out that his actual job title is Professor of Extra-Galactic Astronomy, which, had I known such a job title existed, might have been enough to keep me in the world of physics.