It was once believed that the Sun orbited the Earth and a human walking on the moon was nothing but a daydream. Science and technology have both quenched and further intensified our curiosity about the Universe. We are on an eternal mission to try to explain the “impossible” and explore the boundaries of our knowledge.

2016 signifies an important year during which some seemingly impossible things have been made possible – humans lived in space for almost a year and scientists discovered gravitational waves: ripples in the fabric of spacetime – proving to us time and again how the power of science can enable us to achieve the seemingly impossible.

The School of Physics and Astronomy’s Dr Edward Gomez, Professor Haley Gomez and Sarah Eve Roberts were invited to Hong Kong last week to showcasing examples of “impossible to possible” science to families and students at Science Alive 2016.

The team were invited to Hong Kong by the British Council. Science Alive is jointly organised by the British Council, the Hong Kong Science Museum, the Education Bureau and the Hong Kong Education City Limited, and sponsored by the Croucher Foundation.

Every year for the past 23 years, Science Alive has invited leading UK academics and communicators in various fields of science to engage Hong Kong’s students, teachers and the public in activities that promote a wider understanding of science.

This year was the turn of Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy. During the weekend we delivered a variety of drop-in activities and science walk-about shows, inviting families to listen to black holes while playing Black Hole Hunter, see themselves in invisible infrared light and build an exo-planet system with LittleBits.

On Monday we hosted student workshops for junior secondary students from local schools on ‘Red Dwarfs and Blue Supergiants: the life and times of stars’. The workshop invited students to use Star-in-a-Box and LCOGT’s robotic telescopes to explore the entire life-cycle of stars, from dramatic birth to violent end, and discover what a star’s mass can reveal about its past and its future.