We start, as perhaps all good talks should, with Genesis. Daniel Wolf Savin took us through the first three days of creation, from the light of our universes first stars to the formation of water, and maybe even life, on planets like our own. In the lab his team has recreated the chemical conditions of the first stars and used it to infer some of the evolution and distribution of the chemicals that form the building blocks of life. On the way he also gave us pearls of wisdom such as the best way to ensure a healthy supply of Belgian chocolate in your laboratory, and jokes that even he admitted were "good science but bad comedy".
After his stellar ("good science") talk we also heard from astronomy graduate student Moiya McTier, about how space affects all of our everyday lives. Meanwhile up on the roof we had clear skies, with Stephen Mohammed, Jorge Cortés, Danielle Rowland, and Emily Sandford guiding our telescopes to the Moon, Mars and a proliferation of double star systems. And finally but fluently we had Erin Flowers explaining the wonders of the universe in all your favourite dimensions on the 3D wall.
-- Zephyr Penoyre (graduate student)
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