On Wednesday 13 October we were joined by Professor Brad Gibson for the first episode in our second series of Alumni Masterclasses. You can watch the video of that session below.

Have we been visited before?  Are they out there watching… listening… studying us?  And if they are out there, where might ‘there’ be?  Our Milky Way Galaxy can be a nasty and inhospitable place for life to develop… but, all is not lost… there are some very unique and special places hidden amongst this hostile environment where the building blocks for life might just be right for extraterrestrial life to flourish.  In this lecture, Brad will examine the evidence for and against the existence of extraterrestrial life, and walk you through the associated good, bad, and ugly corners of our Galaxy.

Bio: Professor Brad Gibson

An Aussie-Canadian transplant, Brad is the Head of Physics & Maths, and Director of the E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics, at the University of Hull.  Brad’s work has gained a degree of notoriety by defining the Milky Way’s Galactic Habitable Zone (named a Top 10 News Story of the Year by National Geographic), determining the expansion rate of the Universe (for which their team was awarded the Gruber Prize in Cosmology), and building the world’s first Liquid Mirror Telescope Observatory.  Brad’s 300+ outreach events over past 4 years have reached nearly a million people around the world, including more than 50 schools and colleges around the UK.  His commitment to widening participation and diversity, and improving the career prospects of physics students, led to his “Changing Face of Physics” campaign being named Best Practice in the Country by the UK’s Equality Challenge Unit.