Edinburgh Science Festival 2026
April 15, 2026
Great to be in Edinburgh for the 2026 Edinburgh Science Festival. Gave a talk on my book: “A Crack in Everything: How black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage”. Lots of new stuff since I last spoke such as the observational proof of Stephen Hawking’s 1971 Black Hole Area Conjecture and the discovery by NASA’s James Webb Telescope in the early Universe of “Little Red Dots”, which appear to be baby supermassive black holes – 100,000 to 10 million times the mass of Sun – shrouded in dense clouds of dust.
Here I am being introduced by Edinburgh Science Festival’s Ali Birkett, who is an expert on dung beetles. Did you know they navigate by using the Milky Way? www.science.org/content/arti… I think #EdSciFest should get Ali to talk on the subject. I’d buy a ticket!
Q: How come black holes include some of the most luminous objects in the Universe when they are black? A: The light doesn’t come from the black hole but from gas swirling like water down a plug hole down through an “accretion disc“ onto the hole. Friction heats this to incandescence.
Q: if nothing that falls into a black hole can ever come out again, how does Hawking radiation get out? A: it doesn’t. Hawking radiation originates in the space just outside the “surface”, or event horizon of a black hole.
Q: Will our supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A*) eventually suck in all of our Galaxy? A: No. All the stars except those very close to the black hole are safe because they have orbital motion (angular momentum) which is hard to destroy. Its effect is is to counteract gravity.
Stunning glass door at National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
“This is Einstein in his rock ‘n’ roll years…” The old ones are always best!
What an author likes to see! Bookshop in Portobello.
What a great idea to have a microphone I could throw into the audience for a person with a question to catch. Sadly, it didn’t survive the first impact!
Roxanne and the lovely drawing she did of me giving my talk.
What are the chances I would give a talk at the National Museum of Scotland about my book on black holes and find, next to my book in the museum bookshop, one by Paul Murdin, whose talk on his discovery of the first black hole, and which I attended, aged 12, inspired my interest in black holes?!
Rescued a half-dead potted plant abandoned between two bins in Edinburgh. Brought it back to London on the train. It was very heavy. Named it Mary Queen of Pots. It’s thrived for the past 5 years. Can’t believe I have found Mary Queen of Pots’ long-lost brother, abandoned next to a bin in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket. Will be going back on the train to London with me to be re-united with its sibling.
This shelf in a second-hand bookshop in Portobello spooked me out because I read every one of these Arthur C. Clarke books in exactly these editions. Do I have doppelgänger out there?
The wonderful interior of the National Museums of Scotland
Thanks to the Edinburgh Science Festival for putting me up in a room with this fabulous view of Edinburgh Castle
Just a spoon I photographed in a Portobello café