Friday 4th October 2024 The Discovery of Gravitational Waves

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Professor Mike Cruise

The image is an artist’s impression of gravitational waves generated by binary neutron stars.
Credit: R. Hurt/Caltech-JPL

In 1916 Albert Einstein predicted that his new theory of gravitation, now called General Relativity, included wave modes which could propagate in vacuum a little like electromagnetism. These modes- the “gravitational” waves- were predicted by Einstein to be so weak that they would “never be detected”.

Professor Mike Cruise

Mike Cruise has been active in Space Science for more than 50 years. He received degrees from University College London in 1968 and 1973 and went on to do research in X-Ray astronomy at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory using sounding rockets launched from Woomera, South Australia. In 1980 he was appointed to a lectureship at UCL and worked on Ariel VI and HIPPARCOS before leaving to join the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 1986. First as Group leader for Astrophysics and then Division Head and Associate Director of RAL, Mike was involved in the management of ROSAT, SOHO, Cluster and Spectrum RG. He served on many national and international space policy and review committees.

In 1995 Mike was appointed Professor of Astrophysics and Space Research at the University of Birmingham and set up the gravitational wave group at Birmingham in 1996. He led the Birmingham work on LISA Pathfinder in addition to continuing his own research on the interaction of gravitational waves and electromagnetic fields. Mike was appointed Head of Physics and Astronomy at Birmingham in 1997 and then Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University in 2002.

Mike Cruise has chaired space policy committees in STFC, the UK Space Agency and ESA. He was appointed Professor Emeritus on his retirement from Birmingham in 2012 and has subsequently served as Treasurer and President of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Mike has written over 200 scientific papers and co-authored one book.




Friday 6th December 2024 New Results from Gaia

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Crystallising white dwarfs, spinning minor planets, and our Galaxy’s dark matter halo

Professor Michael Perryman

The image shows the integration of the M1 primary mirror on the torus of the Gaia spacecraft © EADS Astrium SAS, France


Science populariser Ethan Siegel has described the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission as “One of the most remarkable space science missions that most people have never heard of”. It is 10 years into its pioneering objective of mapping out the three-dimensional positions and motions of two billion stars in our Galaxy and beyond. This is providing great advances in understanding the way that stars are born and evolve, and yielding remarkable insights into the structure and evolution of our own Galaxy.

I will look at just three examples of how astronomers are using these data: to peer inside white dwarfs and understand how they are cooling over billions of years, to examine how solar radiation pressure is re-arranging the orbits and rotation of thousands of minor planets in our Solar System, and to look at the fossil records of cannibalised galaxies in our Galaxy’s outer halo to see how our own Milky Way galaxy came into existence.


Michael Perryman obtained a degree in physics, and a PhD in radio astronomy, at Cambridge University. During a 30-year career with the European Space Agency, he was the scientific leader of the Hipparcos space astrometry mission between 1981-1997, and of the follow-on Gaia space astrometry mission between 1995-2008. He was Professor of Astronomy at Leiden University, The Netherlands, between 1993-2009, and has received various awards for his leadership of space astrometry, including the Gold Medal of the French Astronomical Society, the Academy Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Tycho Brahe Prize of the European Astronomical Society, and the international Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2022. He has held a position as Adjunct Professor, University College Dublin since 2013.

Tickets available here (£3 for members of BRLSI or Herschel Society and students, £6 for others, proceeds to the BRLSI).