Dr Ulrich Schneider asks: is "detecting" the same as "seeing"?

You can now watch Dr Ulrich Schneider's talk on whether or not we can believe what we see.

Physics is an empirical science where the experiment reigns supreme, and modern physics arguably started when Newton observed apples falling from a tree. Nowadays, however, scientists typically look at images and graphs generated by computers analysing data from potentially complex experiments. 

In this online talk Dr Ulrich Schneider, University Reader in Many-body Physics, explores whether this fundamentally is still the same thing as ‘seeing’, and whether the development of ever more complex experiments have changed the way we do physics.  Can we actually see an atom or a black hole? How is AI being trained to recognise images, and is this having an impact on what we see?

This event was originally planned as part of the Cambridge Science Festival 2020.