A TALE OF TWO ECLIPSES • Prof. Tom Ray | Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies скачать в хорошем качестве

A TALE OF TWO ECLIPSES • Prof. Tom Ray | Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Last year marked the centenary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. As is well known, astronomers became convinced that Einstein was right after Eddington’s famous expedition to measure the gravitational deflection of starlight in 1919. Recently the equipment that proved critical in testing Einstein’s theory has been found after being lost for almost 70 years. Remarkably its discovery has led to the amazing finding that Eddington’s expedition may not have been necessary. The finger of suspicion points at Sir Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal, who could have been trying to protect Eddington from being conscripted into the British Army during World War I. BIOGRAPHY Tom Ray is Professor of Astrophysics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He began his career in Radio Astronomy at Jodrell Bank (the site where Sputnik was first detected in the West) before working at the University of Sussex and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. His main area of interest is star formation and, in particular, the supersonic jets that stars like our sun produce when less than a million years old. Tom Ray is also Co- Principal Investigator of the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). JWST, which is due for launch in 2018, will replace Hubble. His other interests include ancient astronomical sites (such as Newgrange) and historical astronomy. In his spare time he likes sailing and the occasional Guinness! FRONTIERS OF PHYSICS TEACHERS’ CONFERENCE Dublin Institute of Technology 24 September 2016 Camera : Marek Bogacki Produced by DOCUMENTAVI MMXVI