WAS October 2025 Society meeting
Anyone is welcome to come along to this presentation.
Also accessible online through Zoom.
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86837857650?pwd=JkfBkxl3kWAXjbz3mzx6cFzY9bq70U.1
This month's meeting will contain the following:
1. Night sky in October
2. Astronomy News
3. Main talk at 7:50 pm
Title: The Science of Science Fiction - Professor Jan Eldridge
From Lost in Space and The Jetsons to Interstellar, the science behind science fiction films and television series is pretty variable, ranging from rubbish to … quite interesting. Much of it is simply an adjunct to the special effects.The great writers (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Ursula le Guin, Richard Morgan, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson) have expanded our views of what could be. Often their work did not survive contact with Hollywood.
A few films and TV series are truly memorable: 'Beam me up, Scotty!’; ‘The red pill’; 'Exterminate!’; and ‘It’s life, Jim – but not as we know it.’ But the books are better.
This month’s speaker is an esteemed astrophysicist (and neither a replicant nor a sleeve) who can provide a detailed rationale for her views.
About our speaker: Jan Eldridge has a PhD in astrophysics from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. She undertook postdoctoral research at the Institut d’Astrophysics de Paris, Queen’s University Belfast, and the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge. She moved to New Zealand in 2011, joining the Physics Department as lecturer in astrophysics, and became professor in 2023. She is currently Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science. Her research is focused upon the lives and deaths of stars. She writes: 'Most of my work involves the suite of computer codes I have created, the Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis code (BPASS). Using BPASS I study stars, supernovae, and gravitational wave sources in our own galaxy out to the edge of the observable Universe.'
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