A very mysterious Cafe Scientifique Dubai

Cafe Sci Dubai's fifth event took place at the usual Lila Cafe on Friday, delving this time into a number of topics with one thing in common: mystery. The founders began with their introductions: Rohan Roberts sinking into black holes, dark matter, abiogenesis and whale beachings, and Raya Bidshahri pondering beauty and consciousness as evolutionary and neurological phenomena. Two videos were screened around the open discussion/meet-and-greet period: one about multiverse theory and extraterrestrials, and the other about black holes.

Following these, a moderated discussion was held about time dilation, stereoscopic vision, and whatever else attendees could come up with. Yes, a few of these could be looked up on the web in great detail, but many attendees' perspectives were rather insightful. Further fun was had during the post-event wind-down, when we played a little game I improvised by applying the game of charades to scientific terms instead of films and such.

Cafe Scientifique returns from the dead

Cafe Scientifique Dubai's latest public science discussion, held the Friday before last at Lila Cafe TECOM , was about de-extinction, and started by dropping an asteroid on pop culture's most cherished vision of someday jeeping around Jurassic Park; at present, we simply cannot get enough intact dinosaur DNA to put together into a workable genetic code.

Rohan Roberts and Raya Bidshahri introducing

But don't lose hope, for we likely can get an Age of Exploration Park up and running, with dodos, sea cows, and other victims of human population expansion put back into the biosphere. Maybe even a Cenozoic Park, full of Ice Age megafauna. And it's perhaps not as exciting for a movie, but we might be able to pull together a garden of recently extinct plants.

Open discussion

There was talk of corporatism, hybridization with extinct lifeforms, extending human rights to Neanderthals, preventing the use of de-extinction as an excuse for further ecological destruction, etc. As would be expected, debates on bringing back dead individuals also erupted every now and then (with broad use of Godwin's Law invoked at one point) until species-level de-extinction was brought back into focus. Basically, the discussions often veered in the direction of bioethics, and while I would have preferred more focus on hows than whys, a fair amount of sci & tech was touched upon collaterally.

Cafe Scientifique on the brain

We had a bigger turnout at the second and latest Cafe Scientifique Dubai; I'm not sure if it was word of mouth or the two-hour radio special on Dubai Eye 103.8 that helped more.

Anyway, after last month's engaging cosmology/astronomy discussion, the topic this time was, as literature teacher Rohan Roberts and budding neuroscientist Raya Bidhshahri mentioned, a field of study in which we know even less: the brain.

Roberts offered a more core biological perspective on brain structure and complexity, moving on to describing fascinating experiments like rat brains cross-wired into each other on the internet. He also spoke about the BRAIN Initiative, a transhumanist perspective on information loss upon brain death. Next, Bidshahri described aspects of consciousness, speaking about self awareness, continuity, privacy, etc.

The discussion phase took on a lot of topics, including lucid dreams, qualia, memory, and even popular film (apparently, Inception is not too far off the mark). The evening's program also included an interpretive dance by Lara Matossian-Roberts to a poetic description of the brain's structure, a music video comprising auto-tuned snippets of brain science talks, and a dystopian video speculation of life in a world where memory can be digitized. If you'd like to check out the music video:

Cafe Scientifique Comes to Town

If you have science on the brain and live in the UAE, there's some good news for you. Dubai has just seen its first Cafe Scientifique, an event at which scientists, science-minded and science-curious people alike talk about, well, science. But instead of a lecture hall or some other relatively sterile venue, these are held in a discussion format in casual cafe ambiance. Specifically, Cafe Lila in TECOM. The clean, white decor greatly added to the lab-like "scienciness" of the vanue. It's also a 10 minute walk from home for me.

Roberts' journey to the edge

It's apparently an originally British concept, developed to help bring science to the public, and have now spread around the world. Rohan Roberts, a Dubai-based teacher and professional developer at Winchester School, is the organizer of these events, and is known to be a proponent of science in these parts. He actually organized an astronomy art exhibition not too long ago, and his being a teacher of literature while being deeply interested in and involved with science is a prime example of what Cafe Scientifique is all about.

Bidshahri expounds

The first topic of the season was cosmology, specifically "The Edge of the Universe". After an introductory note by fellow teacher Lara Matossian-Roberts, Roberts and one of his students, the intellectually prodigious Raya Bidshahri, began with an imagined narrative of a journey from earth to the edges of the cosmos, aided by slides. This was followed by a brief meet-and-greet, a documentary clip, and a long discussion of time travel, the "shape" of the universe and the speed of light. I think everyone had a great time, as many of us hung around long after the farewell note to continue the discussion.

Bidshahri, Roberts and Matossian-Roberts

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CafeSciDubai