The world-changing ideas of James Hutton, a product of the university and Edinburgh, are the inspiration behind the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival’s Standard Life Opening Event: Deep Time. Experts will explain the history and theories behind what one of the most spectacular visual arts events ever in Scotland. How did Hutton’s theories revolutionise how we viewed the earth and our place on it, what exactly is deep time, and what geological period are we living in now?