Popular science in conjunction with Bildmuseet's current exhibition Entangle / Physics and the Artistic Imagination. Listen to short talks by physicists from Umeå University about the fundamental forces that shape our world. This Sunday you will meet Thomas Wågberg and Michael Bradley, both Professors of Physics. Each short lecture will take about 20–25 minutes, and afterwards there will be time for questions.
In the sun, marvellous processes occur, where light elements, especially hydrogen, combine into heavier elements such as helium. The energy released can be described by Einstein's most famous equation: E=mc2. The energy from the sun drives in principle all processes on our earth, but mankind has failed through history utilizing the sun's energy to satisfy our energy needs, especially for industrial processes and transport.
At Bildmuseet, Thomas Wågberg will tell you about the different types of energy that we can convert from sunlight. He will describe how processes can be refined so that with the help of the sun and clean water, we can produce hydrogen gas, an excellent fuel that will be part of the solution for a future sustainable society.
Thomas Wågberg is a Professor of Physics at Umeå University, with speciality in nanophysics and materials. He leads the research group "Nano for Energy", which focus on nanomaterials for renewable energy applications.
In general relativity gravity is described as curvature of space and time. For weak fields and low speeds, it gives roughly the same result as Newton's gravity theory, but it also predicts several new phenomena. Under extreme conditions, gravity can become so strong that even light is stopped and a black hole is formed. Celestial bodies in relative motion emit gravitational waves which on their journey through the room stretch and compress it.
Observatories have recently measured gravitational waves that formed when gigantic black holes one billion light-years away from Earth merged. The deviations from Newton's theory are usually so tiny that we can ignore them in everyday life, but when positioning with the help of GPS, one needs to take into account that time passes differently at different heights.
Michael Bradley is a Professor of Physics at Umeå University. His research has mainly concerned problems in general relativity, e.g. methods for constructing of solutions to the field