The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics MAS and GAM celebrate Astronomy Day with a talk called"The sky as a canvas of the imagination and the universe as a time machine", given by Álvaro Rojas Arriagada, astronomer and scientific disseminator who investigates the galactic bulge, the disk of the Milky Way and the globular clusters of the galaxy.
Observing the night sky, and with it the universe, constitutes both a journey through time and one into our own collective consciousness. Measurements of time, distance or mass in the universe far exceed any human scale, making it even take years for light to reach us from the nearest star. In this sense, looking far away is looking towards a universe that is more and more remote in time, a journey that has taken us back to almost the moment of its birth: Observing the universe is like looking through a time machine.
Throughout the history of our civilization, man has seen images of countless characters, beasts, artifacts, stories and myths drawn in the night sky. A cultural heritage that is still seen today unnoticed but on a daily basis. In that sense, the universe has served as a canvas for the projection of our collective imagination across time and human cultures.
This talk is an invitation to take a short journey through these paths, time, space and collective imagination.
About the exhibitor
Álvaro Rojas Arriagada is an astronomer, researcher at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics MAS. Master from the Catholic University of Chile. PhD from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. Its main areas of study are the galactic bulge, the Milky Way disk, and globular galaxy clusters. With this, it seeks to decode the fossil record of the past history of chemical evolution and dynamics that these stars contain.
He currently also works as a researcher at the UC Institute of Astrophysics. In addition to his important scientific work, he has had an outstanding career in dissemination, being a fundamental member of the MAS creative team. He has given numerous talks and workshops in schools in Chile and for the general public, in addition to participating in scientific advice on important MAS projects such as the preparation of the exhibitions Solar Tunnel: A Stellar Journey, financed by the Explora Program; and the Scale Solar System located on the San Joaquín UC campus, a project supported by the Millennium Scientific Initiative.
Mar 19, 2020
Thu - 4 pm
Room C2 (building B, floor -1)
Free, upon registration at HERE