Hello all and welcome back to a brand new year of science in London! After two very quiet weeks over Christmas, events are slowly beginning to start up again, with the societies and museums generally kicking off this week and the universities in the next couple of weeks. As always, we will publish a weekly round-up of the highlights, and you can see all the events we know about in the Google Calendar of London Science events. Obviously we don’t know about everything that’s happening, so if we’ve missed something off, please do let us know! If you run an event or a venue with regular events and would like access to enter all your events into our calendar, you are very welcome – please do get in touch.
Without further ado: the best of science in London this week:
Monday
The first Fiction Lab of the year is at the RI tonight, with Jennifer Rohn at the helm of a discussion about The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth by Stuart Clark, who will also be attending to talk about and answer questions about his book. 7pm; all welcome, read the book in advance.
Tuesday
In true New Year style, LSE asks “Is it time for a digital detox?”. Speaker Daniel Sieberg is author of The Digital Diet: The Four-step Plan to Break your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in your Life and will be speaking at LSE on how to use technology in a healthier way. Amusingly half the event page information is about Twitter hashtags, Facebook links and how to listen online. 6:30pm; all welcome.
Wednesday
A notoriously unpredictable one from the Chemistry Centre at the RSC tonight: BBC Weather Presenter and Met Office Forecaster Peter Gibbs gives a behind the scenes look at weather forecasting, for the next few days and for long term climate forecasting. 6:30pm; free but book.
Thursday
The Michael Faraday Prize Lecture at the Royal Society is the pick of tonight’s activity with Professor Colin Pillinger taking on meteorites in his lecture “Stones from the stars”. Professor Pillinger is Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Open University, was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize in recognition of his excellence in communicating science, and has the excellent job description of “designing unique instruments to analyse extraterrestrial samples.”. 5:30pm start; free and no advance booking, first come, first served.
The Weekend
Hampstead Observatory is still running its winter schedule of observing, open Friday and Saturday night 8-10pm for star gazing and Sunday 11-1pm for sun gazing. Free and no need to book, but all weather dependent, so check first.
You can follow the Nature Network London Google calendar of events in London at https://blogs.nature.com/london/2011/05/17/scientific-events-calendar. Updated daily.