RMG Live: In Conversation with Dr Emma Chapman - First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time

The latest of our members and patrons RMG Live’s took place Thursday 26 November with Dr Emma Chapman. Emma was joined by RMG Director Paddy Rodgers and ROG Astronomer Dr Greg Brown to discuss her latest book - First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time.

By now the Zoom Webinar format was tried and tested, so the stress was taken out of the event. Strange how digital events can often be more stressful than live events - I think it’s because you can’t distract crowds with canapes and drinks maybe?

Regardless, it turned out to be a great listen. Emma’s book discusses the first billion years of the Universe after the Big Bang when the first stars formed. Even for those unaccustomed to astronomers, there was a surprising amount of banter (with some killer animations). Definitely recommend a watch.

Thanks to Emma, Greg & Paddy as well as Amy Greaves and Alice from Bloomsbury Publishing.

Emma Chapman is a Royal Society research fellow and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, based at Imperial College London. She is among the world's leading researchers in search of the first stars to exist in our Universe, 13 billion years ago, and she is involved in both the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands and the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia, a telescope that will eventually consist of a million antennas pointing skywards in the desert.

First Light uses the latest research to shed light on the first billion years after The Big Bang, this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes of observational astronomy, which allow scientists to search for the echoes and footprints of these stars. First Light is a comprehensive guide to a research area that is set to dominate astrophysics.

The captioned film was provided for one month exclusively to members and patrons as an RMG Live. For more info check out RMG Members and RMG Patrons.