Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: a cosmic quest to the edge of physics

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 3rd July 2025 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Hybrid

In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Tony Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, using them to build a picture of how the universe works.  
What is the biggest number you’ve ever heard of? A trillion? A quadrillion or even a quintillion? Well, let me introduce you to Graham’s number, a number so large that if you thought about it the wrong way, your head would collapse into a black hole. In this talk, inspired by my book, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, I will take you on a head twisting cosmic tour, using some extraordinary numbers to explore the deepest and most fundamental truths in our universe. of the universe. As well as Graham’s Number and the curse of Black Hole Death, we will encounter a googolplex and the gigantic googolplician universe, so big that it contains exact copies of each and everyone of us. And I really mean an exact copy, stood somewhere far away in the cosmos, reading an abstract for a popular science talk. This might sound like science fiction but its not. It is physics at the cutting edge.

Join online if you can't meet us at the meeting room HERE

Speaker: Antonio Padilla

Tony Padilla is a Professor of Physics at the University of Nottingham and has previously held research positions at the University of Oxford and the University of Barcelona. He has published over 70 academic papers in leading academic journals and in 2016, he shared the Buchalter Cosmology Prize for his work on the cosmological constant problem. He has held a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society and his research is currently supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Outside of academia he is best known as a regular presenter on two successful YouTube channels: Sixty Symbols and Numberphile, where his most popular videos include a discussion of Ramanujan’s sum of all positive integers which has been viewed more than 7 million times. He is an avid football fan and can often be found watching Liverpool Football Club from his regular seat on the Kop.