Il-Ħaġar Museum is pleased to announce the start of a new season of public talks, beginning on Saturday, the 5th of October. In the first talk, Professor Joseph Caruana from the University of Malta’s Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy, will explore the historical challenge of maritime navigation. Humankind has been traversing the seas long before history started to be written. An enduring challenge through the ages was the matter of accurately finding one’s position at sea. This problem presented a tough nut to crack, attracting some of the brightest minds to bear on finding a solution. In this talk, Prof. Joseph Caruana will be telling the story of how the celestial intersected with the maritime in myriad cultures over a great many century — enabling powerful navies to roam the seas, empires to expand their reach, and incredible stories to be recorded. From mythology to science, from works of art to fascinating navigational instruments, this talk will unravel the tale of surmounting one of the most formidable problems in exploration.
This talk is being held in collaboration with the University of Malta’s Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy.
Prof. Joseph Caruana read for a joint honours B.Sc. in physics and mathematics at the University of Malta (UM) and carried out his doctoral research in astrophysics at the University of Oxford. At Christ Church, Oxford, he tutored General Relativity and Cosmology. In 2012 he took up a postdoctoral research position in astrophysics at the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik (AIP) in Potsdam, Germany. In 2016 he joined the Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences & Astronomy at UM, where he lectures on optics, astrophysics and cosmology, and the philosophy of science. His main research interests encompass the early universe, galaxy formation and evolution, galactic dynamics, and the history of astronomy. At UM he initiated a light pollution research group, leading an ongoing night sky brightness monitoring effort, with a particular focus on light pollution’s effects upon the environment, ecology, and human health. He is also interested in the application of statistical methods and mathematical models to hyperbaric medicine. Joseph is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the European Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union.
RSVP: events@heartofgozo.org.mt
