If you enjoyed the 2022 Christmas Lectures, you'll LOVE what we do all year round to connect people of all ages and backgrounds with science. Explore our public programme of talks now: http://rigb.org/whats-on | Royal Institution of Great Britain

🥚 Christmas Lectures iconic object no. 2 - from 2022 with Sue Black We hard-boiled two ostrich eggs to shoot them with a BB gun, to demonstrate bullet wounds on skulls. It took two hours to hard boil them, and we ended up dyeing one green for contrast on-camera, which made it look rather like a cassowary egg. Again, it was an ostrich egg. We'd do anything for science – but not get anywhere near a cassowary. 📺 The 2024 Christmas Lectures will be on BBC Four and iPlayer 29, 30 and 31 December |

At this festive time of year, BBC Archive brings you the ghost of Christmas Lectures past. Go science! This year's lectures end today. | BBC Archive

The 2022 Christmas Lectures with forensic anthropologist Sue Black start TONIGHT. We cannot contain our excitement! 🙌 In lecture one we'll look at what clues are hidden in our bodies, and how investigators can uncover a host of information about someone from the smallest fragment of their remains. Tune in to BBC Four and iPlayer at 8pm! | Royal Institution of Great Britain

Are you ready for round two of the Christmas Lectures tonight? Sue Black will work with a host of world-class experts in forensic science, as they reveal how they find clues that are invisible to the naked eye, and analyse them to solve crimes. Tune in to BBC Four/iPlayer at 8pm! | Royal Institution of Great Britain

The Christmas Lectures, supported by CGI, are starting TONIGHT! We couldn't wait either, so here is a little sneak peek of what's to come... 🎁 Tune in at 7.00pm on BBC Four and iPlayer to follow Maggie Aderin-Pocock on a fantastic voyage through space, searching for evidence of alien life. | Royal Institution of Great Britain

Don't miss the final of the 2024 Christmas Lectures, supported by CGI! Tonight, Chris van Tulleken will analyse how our diets have changed through history, and how global food systems affect our health and our planet. Tune in to BBC Four and iPlayer at 9pm! | Royal Institution of Great Britain

🕯️ Christmas Lectures iconic object no. 4 – from various lectures in the 1800s, with Michael Faraday This is Michael Faraday's candle holder, used when delivering the popular lecture series "A Chemical History of a Candle" in the mid-1800s, which helped audiences step into the world of science through a familiar household object. The lectures were later published as a book, in which Faraday wrote: "There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into pla