As someone who studied physics at university, I’ve been to many physics lectures but none on this scale. 13,000 people descended on the O2 arena to hear Professor Brian Cox.
During the first half of the show we were treated to a rather cinematic display of the wonders of the cosmos. On the huge screen behind him, Prof Cox led us on a trip through the stars that included some photographs from the James Webb telescope taken only the day before. These new deep space pictures have been seen in the news quite a lot but viewing them on an iPhone screen does not do them justice. Shown in the way they were at the O2 allowed us to appreciate the magnitude and incredible detail of these new ground breaking feats of astrophotography.
We were then given a short cosmology lecture to help us understand the concept of a black hole which made up the basis of the rest of the show. Part way through, Prof Cox introduced Robin Ince, with whom Cox co-presents ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage’ the BBC Radio 4 show. This helped inject a bit more energy from the witty banter between the two, which then felt missing when Ince left the stage to let Cox continue teaching us some cosmology.
The second half took a similar format but this time the crash course lecture was on quantum mechanics. I wondered slightly at what level the entire experience was being pitched at, as at times Cox’s charisma helped get the entire arena throughly enthused, but often the detail he went into went way beyond my comprehension leaving me a little confused. And so I can’t imagine how some of the many young kids in the audience were feeling.
At the end of the second act, Ince joined the stage again for a Q&A where the audience’s questions from Twitter were taken. This was brilliantly funny and very informative, I wished it had lasted so much longer!
Overall it was a brilliant show and one I would recommend taking your science loving friends and family along to, and maybe even some of the science loathing to let Prof Cox change their minds!
{🎟 AD – PR invite – Tickets were gifted in exchange for an honest review}
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