UNSEEN UNIVERSE A History of the Invisible with Philip Ball Sunday 29th October at 3:00 pm The craze for Spiritualism in the mid to late 19th Century had parallels in developments in the physical sciences at that time. Both were concerned with invisible phenomena and their use for communication. The discovery of radio waves, cathode rays, X-rays and radioactivity caused several leading scientists to postulate that the ether might be a medium bridging the physical and the spirit worlds. Scientists used electromagnetism to investigate séances and speculated about how Christian belief in the afterlife might be consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. Philip Ball will discuss this interplay between cutting-edge science and concepts of the “spirit world” in the late Victorian and Edwardian age, and its legacy today in ideas about psychic powers manifested in cinema, photography and the internet. Travel advice to the Dissenters' Chapel - During the day guests can walk through the cemetery to get to the chapel but at night the main cemetery gates on the Harrow Road will be closed and the only accessible entrance is on Ladbroke Grove. Previously the address for this entrance was 364 Ladbroke Grove but this number has now been updated to 391. |
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