This first public event of 2018 for CAG will be in conjunction with the Caithness Science Festival.......

A summary of the talk by Dr MacKinnon is as follows......

For 21 years at the end of the 19th century Scotland's meteorologists maintained a manned presence on the summit of Ben Nevis. A short stay there in 1894 provided the impetus that eventually led the CTR Wilson to the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics – the first Scot to gain this honour. We'll briefly recount the dramatic history of the Ben Nevis Observatory before looking at Wilson's invention of the cloud chamber and his role at the beginnings of the study of radiation from space: so-called “cosmic rays”. Cosmic ray science remains a vital, fundamental topic and we conclude with a look at some exciting discoveries of recent years.