• The STIAS-SU-hosted Physics symposium will feature several outreach lectures in the field of Physics throughout October.
• The public outreach lectures are aimed at university academic staff and student.
• Predictability in Science in the age of AI Nobel Symposium takes place at STIAS Wallenberg Research Centre from 24th to 28th October.

The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) Nobel in Africa initiative together with Stellenbosch University (SU) will be hosting a series of Noble Symposium lectures.

This is a momentous event as it will be the first time a Nobel Symposia series is hosted outside of Scandinavia since it was started in 1965, Stellenbosch University said.

Ordinarily, these are closed sessions in which the world’s top scientists discuss and deliberate on new research and developments in their field. The series of lectures happening locally are different.

“The STIAS-SU-hosted Physics symposium, however, will include an outreach element that will see participants delivering public lectures at universities and research institutes countrywide as a way of taking science to a wider audience. The public outreach lectures are aimed at university academic staff and students to inspire the next generation of scholars on the continent, while also raising awareness of the latest scientific discoveries among the general public,” reads a media alert sent to Hypertext.

The outreach lectures taking place will centre around physics with the topics being covered including quantum mechanics, black holes and the shape of proteins.

The lectures started this week with lectures taking place at the University of the Western Cape and University of Cape Town. You can find a full schedule below, which you can click to enlarge.

The Nobel Symposia is made possible thanks to funding from the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The event is hosted under the auspices of the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the lectures above, STIAS Wallenberg Research Centre will host the Predictability in Science in the age of AI Nobel Symposium from 24th to 28th October. The symposium will examine how science and AI can work together to make research and experiments easier.

Earlier this month the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2022 was announced. The prize was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger “for groundbreaking experiments with entangled photons that open a path to advanced quantum technologies” as CERN reports.

If you want to understand how momentous those experiments were we advise watching Hank Green’s very excellent explanation in the video below.

@hankgreen1Congrats to all the weirdos who kept hammering at this problem even as others were like “stop being weirdos and do normal physics!!!”♬ original sound – Hank Green

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]