We talk Dark Matter, Effective Field Theory and Ultracool Dwarf Stars on Wednesday, March 25th at 7pm. Click here for tickets.
We’re back with a new season of mind-blowing talks, awesome trivia and one of the city’s most unique 19+ nights out, where science gets social and curiosity takes the mic. Join us for our first show back on Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at our new venue, Jack Lonsdale’s.
Every Nite features three 15-minute talks from scientists, experts, and curious thinkers who can explain big ideas in plain, human language. No decoder ring required. Just real knowledge, shared easily with humour and beer. We’re grounded in the simple idea that learning is better with friends and a beverage.
After each talk, the audience joins in a live Q&A. That’s when things heat up – questions, debates, surprising tangents and the occasional piece of scientific gear or space rock passed around the room. **Extreme Rabbit Hole Warning: Many audience members have lost hours to rabbit holes after a nerd nite talk.**
Between talks, we have trivia to keep the neurons warm. Take our survey to help tailor our shows and choose trivia themes – and maybe score free tickets to a show.
It all happens in a classic pub, lit with laughter, clinking glasses, and a healthy amount of nerdy energy.
Show starts pomptly at 7pm. Please arrive by 6:50pm at the latest. Doors open at 6pm. Venue has a great menu!
On Wednesday, March 25th you’ll hear talks on these topics:
“The Search for Matter That Shouldn’t Exist” – Dark Matter
Dr. Jason Holt, Theoretical Nuclear Physicist, TRIUMF, UBC
By watching where matter fails, we learn what holds the universe together. Dark Matter tells us that most of what exists can’t be seen. The edge of matter tells us where the visible world runs out.
Some forms of matter barely interact with anything at all. This talk explores the hunt for matter that almost never shows itself – particles that pass through atoms, planets, and people without leaving a trace. They aren’t visible and they aren’t easy to detect, but they quietly shape the structure of the universe. By studying how ordinary matter responds to these ghostly interactions, physicists uncover the hidden rules that govern reality – often predicting what must exist long before experiments can confirm it.
This talk is about how physicists predict invisible matter long before anyone can measure it.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jason Holt is a theoretical nuclear physicist at TRIUMF and Adjunct faculty at McGill University. Established in 1968 at UBC, TRIUMF is Canada’s particle accelerator centre. Jason also holds degrees in Mathematics and English Literature. Jason has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and given over 150 invited talks internationally. His work has deep connections to some of the most compelling unanswered questions in beyond-standard-model physics.
Ultracool Dwarfs: The Smallest Stars That Still Count
Anna Hughes, PhD, Astrophysics
Most stars in the galaxy aren’t blazing suns — they’re tiny, dim little embers called ultracool dwarfs (UCDs). These are the smallest stars that can still technically call themselves stars, sitting right on the edge of becoming something else entirely.
In this talk, we’ll explore why astronomers are obsessed with finding planets around these miniature suns in the search for life beyond Earth, and why these stars might be some of the strangest, most problematic hosts imaginable. They’re common, close, and full of planets…but they can also be chaotic, flare-happy, and not exactly life-friendly.
Along the way, we’ll zoom out into the bigger mystery: how we actually search for habitable worlds, what “life-friendly” even means, and whether life on Earth might have gotten its start from material blasted off Mars.
Speaker Bio: Anna Hughes is an Astrophysics PhD and former quantum machine learning researcher, now working in the climate and sustainability space. She’s a seasoned snowboarder and hiker, and a truly terrible surfer.
Effective Field Theory – Particle Physics
Surya Raman, Particle Physics, UBC
Effective Field Theory (EFT) is basically physics’ way of saying: “We don’t know everything that’s going on under the hood, but we can still write extremely good rules for what we can see.” Think of it as a highly disciplined way to look for cracks in the Standard Model without guessing the whole new universe in advance.
ATLAS is one of the giant particle detectors at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It records the debris when protons smash together at ridiculous energies. Entanglement measurements at ATLAS are about asking whether the particles produced in these high-energy collisions show quantum entanglement – the spooky quantum correlation where measuring one particle tells you something about another, even when they fly apart. Until recently, entanglement was mostly the playground of quantum optics and tabletop experiments. Now physicists are hunting for it in the chaotic spray of particles from the world’s biggest accelerator.
Surya studies how to use quantum entanglement inside the ATLAS particle wreckage as a new way to stress-test our best theory of the universe. This field is quietly redefining how quantum information theory and particle physics talk to each other — two communities that historically lived in different academic solar systems and are now awkwardly but excitingly moving in together.
Speaker Bio: Surya Sundar Raman is a UBC PhD student in the field of particle physics who works with the ATLAS and TRIUMF collaborations. Established in 1968 at UBC, TRIUMF is Canada’s particle accelerator centre. ATLAS is one of the primary particle physics detectors built to detect data borne out of colliding protons at very high energies at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Surya holds a B.Tech in Engineering Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He has primarily worked on aspects of experimental nuclear and particle physics, but retains a deep penchant for the theoretical, mathematical and philosophical underpinnings of our universe.