Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt and ESA director visit Spain for astronomy conference

In the sun-warmed city of Almería, on Spain's Mediterranean coast, the University has gathered some of the most consequential minds in contemporary astronomy for its fourteenth annual conference. Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt, whose work revealed a universe expanding faster than anyone had imagined, joins ESA scientific director Carole Mundell this week in a meeting that speaks to something larger than any single event: Europe's quiet, steady deepening of its commitment to understanding the cosmos. When a city of this scale draws figures of this stature, it is worth pausing to consider how scie