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lectures > lectures autumn 2002

Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Travel

Speaker: Dr. Jim Al-Khalili
5th October 2002

Is time travel possible? Science fiction has had a monopoly on this question for too long. Now, at last, it is becoming a respectable topic of research taken seriously by physicists. This lecture will cover some of the most fascinating topics in modern physics that lead from Einstein's theory of relativity, such as the Big Bang, black holes, wormholes through space and time, and how they may one day be used to build a time machine.

The lecture will aim to provide answers to questions such as: does the universe have an edge? Are black holes real? Do parallel universes exist? How can we slow time down? And most fascinating of all: will we ever be able to travel back in time?

Jim Al-Khalili is a theoretical physicist and senior lecturer at the University of Surrey. His main research interest is nuclear astrophysics where he has published widely. He has also written numerous popular science articles and books and was a recipient of the Institute of Physics' Public Awareness of Physics Award for 2000. He has twice been nominated for the Michael Faraday Award for the Public Understanding of Science.

His books, written for a lay audience, cover a range of topics in modern physics from cosmology to quantum mechanics. He obtained his PhD from Surrey University in 1989 in theoretical nuclear physics, and after two years at UCL as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, he returned to Surrey, first as an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow, and then as a lecturer.

He is currently the Undergraduate Admissions Tutor in the Department of Physics, Chair of the Institute of Physics Nuclear and Particle Physics Division, and is taking over as the British Association's Physics and Astronomy Recorder. He is married with two children, lives in Southsea in Hampshire, and commutes daily to Surrey University in Guildford.

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