Time passes and we can all feel it. Ancient civilizations used the sun, moon, planets and stars to determine seasons and measure the passage of time. Today, it’s possible to measure an attosecond – a billionth of a billionth of a second.
Yet the question of what time really is continues to preoccupy humans over the centuries. Can we say that the future or the past really exists? How long is the present? What existed before the beginning of time?
Welcome to this ninth edition of Science Today, on the theme of time, where three scientists will present research that provides new insights.
Science Today is a recurring afterwork that kickstarts the brain and the weekend with the most exciting research of the day and some of Stockholm’s best DJs. Science Today invites PhD students and postdocs from Karolinska Institutet (KI), Chalmers University of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Stockholm University (SU) to present their research on stage at the Nobel Prize Museum.
The ticket price also includes entrance to the museum’s exhibitions, which are open until 21:00. Before and after the conversation, Bistro Nobel serves its Friday menu with carefully selected small dishes, suitable wines, beer, cocktails or non-alcoholic options. The bistro and the shop are open until 21:00.
Speakers
Leonie Balter – Postdoc (Department for Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet) and Researcher (Department of Psychology, Stockholm University).
Subject: Does timing matter? How sleep shapes mental health within the day
Summary: In my research, I investigate why mental health fluctuates over time, from the swift swings within a single day to the more gradual shifts throughout the year. A major focus is understanding how sleep and the timing of sleep affect how we function and feel during the day. The mission is to better integrate considerations of timing in the management of mental health conditions.
Ebba Vikdahl – PhD student in ethnology at the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies.
Subject: The time of magic. Constructions of Swedish folk belief at the turn of the 20th century
Summary: In my research, I look at the processes whereby so-called ‘folk belief’ was transformed into a modern scientific and museal object at the turn of the 20th century in Sweden. This is done by focusing the collecting, classification and exhibiting of folk belief objects at Nordiska Museet. By following the objects paths through the museum, I am interested in what kind of recharges and translations take place and how these can be related to questions of power, dis/enchantment and modernity. Ultimately, museum collections are about how we write our history; how we understand our past, where we are and where we are going. Thus, the overall aim of the project concerns what these transformations can tell us about the role of ‘magic’ in the construction of ‘swedishness’ during a time of great social changes.
Erik Isberg – Postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
Subject: Archiving an Ocean: Aquatic Pasts and Planetary Futures in Postwar Ocean Sciences
Summary: In the postwar period, ocean scientists began to pose new questions regarding the properties of the ocean floor. These questions were about time. Could the sediments in the seabed function as an archive of the geological and climatological history of the ocean? And could these histories be used to predict the future on a planet increasingly under pressure from human activities? In my research, I am interested in how scientific practices and methods shape how we think about time and change in the natural world.
Programme
16:30 Doors open
17:00 Mingle and DJ Malin Evrenos (Y+M)
18:00-19:00 Conversation on stage
19:00-20:00 Mingle and DJ Malin Evrenos (Y+M)
Tickets
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