Fossil Colourisation - Symmetry

Available for over a year

Fossil Colourisation Quentin will be exploring how fossil remains of the dinosaurs is revealing information about their colouring and marking – were they striped or spotty – purple or yellow? The development of colour and the eye to see it, over 500 million years ago, was a trigger to the biggest expansion of life on the planet – the ‘Cambrian explosion’. Quentin is joined by Professor Andrew Parker, a Research Leader in Zoology at the Natural History Museum and Dr Phil Manning, Lecturer in Palaeontology, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester. Symmetry Quentin finds out about a mathematical object called the monster with more symmetries than there are atoms in the Sun and finds out why you need 100s of thousands of dimensions to actually see it. The beauty and essence of symmetry and why it’s vital for communications and code breaking. Quentin is joined by Marcus Du Sautoy, Professor of Maths at the University of Oxford and author of Finding Moonshine and Prof Robert Curtis, Deputy Head of Research, School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham.