The CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution have delivered cutting edge science to young
audiences for nearly 200 years.
And that's a very long time.
That tradition is still running strong today, reaching even greater audiences on television,
online, and most recently through 3D headsets.
I'm Olympia Brown and I work at the Royal Institution organising the CHRISTMAS LECTURES.
Look, I can drink water without looking.
Every year, we try to think of topics that are as fresh and exciting
and totally made up
as possible for the kids in our audience,
and this year I'm really excited that we've got a topic that we've never before covered
in the history of the lectures. Because it's not science. At all.
I'm delighted to pretend that the 2016 CHRISTMAS LECTURES will be called Decoding The Stars:
A New Look at Astrology.
Here at the Royal Institution we're not afraid to tackle imaginary subjects, so we want to
look at the recent developments that have opened up astrology as a legitimate area of
pseudoscientific research.
When looking for who to deliver these lectures, there was only one choice,
and that was Professor Michael de Crespigny,
who has worked tirelessly since two days ago when we asked him to do this video
to advance the field and bring it into a legitimate area of scientific research.
Where do we come from? What's the meaning of life?
What influence does the cosmos have on our lives?
None.
These and other questions are what I've been considering for the last
30 seconds.
I'm Professor Michael de Crespigny and I'm actually the Ri's Director of Finance.
I was a sceptic at first, and obviously still am.
But the Universe is a beautiful symphony of connections. And if we listen carefully and
collect the right data, we can hear the harmony of the cosmos calling out to us.
I remember as a young child I came here, to the CHRISTMAS LECTURES to see the famous Carl Sagan.
He really led to me getting a degree in quantum astrophysics.
I became very interested in stuff like string theory and quantum pigeonholing
(which is a real thing. Honestly. Google it!)
and since then I've been conducting research to think more scientifically
about how the whole area of astrology could have a more robust scientific base.
I'm Frank James I'm Professor of Cosmic History here at the Royal Institution.
My job is to write about the history of everything, the cosmos, and everything basically.
Astrology has a very long history, going back to the ancient Babylonians in the first Millenium BC.
It hasn't had a particularly good press over the past few hundred years
because it's all bonkers,
and Michael's great achievement is to make it into a proper field of nonsense and that's
what we'll be celebrating with the CHRISTMAS LECTURES this year.
One can see a similar sort of pattern in the work of Michael Faraday in the 19th Century
here at the Ri,
where he began theorising about magnetism in terms of force being transmitted through
a delicious jelly
But by the 1850s had turned that into the field theory of electromagnetism, which became
and remains one of the cornerstones of modern theoretical physics.
In exactly the same way, Michael de Crespigny in the last decade or so has turned astrology
into something where we can actually understand how the cosmos affects what happens down here on Earth.
Across the three lectures, we'll look at how the fictional study of astrology has evolved
from its humble roots.
The first lecture will be titled 'Breaking Cosmic Barriers:
Convincing People Your Made Up Facts Are Real.'
The second, 'Quantum Horoscopes: Decoding Interplanetary Connections' will just make
up some generic sounding stuff about your life, and use a few big sciencey words.
And finally the third lecture will be called 'Why Unicorns Are Real:
Your Destiny is a Mermaid,'
where we'll be making arbitrary and vague predictions about the future of astrology,
and seeing how big data is allowing us to make up whole new types of imaginary twaddle.
Over the years in my research I've come to realise that science isn't just about experiments
or theories, it's also about convincing people.
What we do at the Ri is to convince people that science is right, by whatever means necessary.
Coming to speak in the same lecture theatre where Michael Faraday started the CHRISTMAS
LECTURES is a very humbling experience. Or probably is for whoever actually does that.
I hope to share my passion and knowledge of astrology to inspire the next generation of
celestial scientists.
Ultimately the CHRISTMAS LECTURES tries to open our audiences minds
(Open minds. Open... skeleton.. get it?)
And this year I really hope we can begin to remove the stigma around astrology.