Today at InScience – Friday 8 November

Do images reflect or shape reality? Robotics specialist and driver of the Curiosity Rover Vandi Verma works on Mars on a daily basis from her desk at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Los Angeles. Through the lenses of various experts we learn how NASA’s images are created, used and manipulated for the sake of science but also for the public. Mars is the ideal place for an investigation into our paradoxical relationship to photography.

Falling into infinite blackness, seeing a mysterious white being or spotting a wolf primed for attack: this is what children with absence epilepsy experience during an episode. Some have hundreds of episodes a day. All of these inner worlds come to life in the exhibition Mapping the Experience. Initiator Maartje Nevejan asks herself this question in her search for a language for children with absence epilepsy.

Black holes are some of the most fascinating and least understood celestial bodies. This year, the Event Horizon Telescope managed to capture an image of a black hole for the first time – a milestone in modern astrophysics. Professor Heino Falcke, chair of the project’s science council, will engage the audience in the mysteries of the dark corners of the universe and the extraordinary scientific process behind the recent breakthrough.

Please note that this lecture is in Dutch.

Fly Rocket Fly tells the unbelievable story of the visionary and entrepreneur Lutz Kayser, who moves to the Congolese jungle. Together with a group of passionate space engineers, he set out to conquer space. The first successful rocket launch in the mid-seventies triggered an international firestorm. What started as a crazy dream, slowly turns into a nightmare. This documentary by Oliver Schwehm is a strange adventure that combines previously unseen archive footage with eye-witness testimony.

In what ways can we change organisms? Why does it feel like we have to be extremely careful with genetic modification? And is that feeling justified? In addition to inspiring technical questions and enthusiastic fantasies (or doomsday scenarios), genetic modification also raises urgent questions of a moral and metaphysical nature. During this special edition of the Philosophical Café Nijmegen, you will delve deeper into the theme. Do you dare to join this debate?

Please note that this program is in Dutch.

Wonder, exploitation and a wish to preserve nature: Curiosity and Control is a journey through the world of Western natural history museums and zoological gardens. The stories – told by historians, architects, zoo managers and a museologist – are about curiosity, control, the desire to preserve and the connection with the natural world. The film is a portrait of the legendary explorer Carl Akeley, known as the ‘father of taxidermy’.