Science and art have always been intertwined, and often met right here at the Ri. Discover more about our cultural history of experimentation and collaboration. Since its foundation in 1799, the Royal ...

Discover how your brain builds reality—and why it sometimes gets it wrong. Imagine your entire life, everything you see, hear, and feel, as a first-person movie. Your brain is the director, producer, ...

When ChatGPT-3 crash-landed onto our computers in November 2022, you’d have been forgiven for thinking this massive leap in artificial intelligence had sprung out of nowhere. From one day to the next, ...

November 30th 2022 is a date permanently etched into the history books. For those unaware of its significance, this was when OpenAI released to the public their free-to-use, large language model ...

You know the story. Two strangers locked eyes across a crowded room, and there it is: butterflies in the stomach, sparks in the air—they know they’ve found “the one”. Love at first sight is a popular ...

Chris Clarkson is a cosmologist working at Queen Mary University of London. He works mainly on the theory of large scale structure of the universe but has worked on many aspects of gravity and ...

On 18 May 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall wrote in his journal ‘the subject is completely in my hands’. This is no cryptic note. Just nine days earlier he had set up his complex and clever new ...

Sci-fi is not all just fun and games. Megan Stephens reflects on the influence the genre has had on real-life research and technology. We’re all familiar with the trappings of science fiction, many of ...

The mining and engineering industries in the 19th century relied heavily on gunpowder as an explosive to aid their work. However, storing and transporting gunpowder on wooden sailing ships was ...

Since its founding in 1799, the Royal Institution has been committed to connecting scientists and the public. Even before the term "scientist" was coined, we played a vital role in bringing scientific ...

Volunteer historian Laurence Scales explores how war surgeons operated 25 years before antibiotics were widely available, starting from a 1915 Discourse here at the Ri. Antibiotics would not be ...

Who is Kevin Fong? Find out more about the 2015 Christmas Lecturer. Kevin has worked with research groups and senior figures at ESA in the past, organising and chairing a number of key meetings whose ...