An evening in Cambridge
May 27, 2025
It was an honour to be in the Fred Hoyle lecture theatre at the Institute of Astronomy talking about black holes. Thanks to Cambridge Astronomical Association cambridgeastronomicalassociation.com for inviting me. Afterwards, I signed a copy of A Crack in Everything for a very keen 10-year-old boy. I told him that, when I was 12, my dad took me to a Junior Astronomical Society talk by the co-discoverer, with Louise Webster, of the first black hole, Paul Murdin. It blew my mind and inspired me to become an astronomer. It was therefore very special to interview Murdin for my book and write a whole chapter on his discovery!
The Institute of Astronomy, created by Fred Hoyle, who coined the term “big bang”.
A thrill to see the Northumbrian Telescope with which Cambridge astronomers observed Neptune TWICE without realising it was a planet!
Neptune: one of THREE blue planets in our Solar System – the others being Earth and Uranus