The 10th Hintze Lecture will be delivered by Professor Hitoshi Murayama, Director, Kavli Institute for the Physics & Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU), The University of Tokyo.

Title: The Quantum Universe

Professor Charles Kane, Class of 1965 Endowed Term Chair & Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania will deliver the 55th Cherwell-Simon Lecture.

Title
Topological Boundary Modes from Quantum Electronics to Classical Mechanics

Cosmological and astrophysical simulations are becoming increasingly sophisticated and realistic as the increasing capacity of high performance computers allows a wider range of physical processes to be modelled, at resolutions matching our observational capabilities. Similarly, comprehensive instrument modelling can produce realistic performance predictions. The synergy of astrophysical and instrumental simulations provides a powerful way to maximise the potential of our future facilities, and is indeed essential as we head into an era of large astrophysical surveys.

The 11th Dennis Sciama Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor Philip Candelas, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.

Title: Simple Calabi-Yau Manifolds and the Landscape of String Vacua

The Wetton Lecture will de delivered by Professor Carlo Frenk, Director, Institute for Computational Cosmology, University of Durham.

Title: "Everything from nothing, or how our universe was made"

The Oxford University Physics Department is set to host another one of its eagerly-anticipated Stargazing Nights! This fun-filled evening of space activities will bring you closer to the stars and galaxies, and let you see some of the ways astronomers are able to learn about how the Universe works. Some of the things you can look forward to are:

Professor Scott Ransom US National Radio Astronomy Observatory will give the 9th Hintze Lecture.

"Millisecond Pulsars, Magnetars, and Black Holes: The Wickedly Cool Stellar Undead"

If you are interested in a DPhil (PhD) beginning in October 2015, come to visit Oxford Astrophysics on our Graduate Open Day which starts at 10:00 on Monday 8th December.
For more information about Astrophysics at Oxford, click here.

In the era of precision cosmology, we think we can accurately predict the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. However the impact of baryonic physics is still largely unknown and our understanding of galaxy formation must rely on observations. A key advance in recent years has been the ability to enrich studies of the luminosity evolution of galaxies with determinations of their stellar or total masses from dynamical analyses using stellar populations, stellar or gaseous dynamical models, weak or strong lensing.