2019 Sofia Science Festival is on from May 9 to 12
The ninth annual Sofia Science Festival opens on May 9 at Sofia Tech Park and continues to May 12, with a full programme of international and Bulgarian presenters, exhibitions and demonstrations. Many of the lectures are in English.
The photograph accompanying this article may give the impression that the science festival is all whizzes and bangs. It is about much more than that, engaging lectures by renowned science communicators.
On May 9, Dr Mark Griffiths will speak on the topic “Slots of fun? The psychology of gambling addiction”.
As the festival programme describes it: “Gambling addiction has become a topic of increasing research interest. This talk argues that all addictions (including gambling addiction) consist of a number of distinct common components (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict and relapse) and that addictive behaviours arise as a consequence of individual, situational, and structural factors.
“The example of slot machine gambling will be used to argue the importance of these contributory factors in helping explain the acquisition, development and maintenance of gambling and problem gambling.”
On May 10, Professor Carole Mundell will speak on “Black holes and Big Bangs”, a “whirlwind tour of black holes, explaining their importance for galaxy evolution and the cataclysmic death of massive stars, and how advanced robotic technology is opening new windows on the black-hole driven dynamic Universe”.
On May 11, palaeontologist Steve Brusatte will dwell on the topic of “The rise and fall of the dinosaurs”, a major re-evaluation of the creatures that ruled the Earth for 150 million years.
There is a great deal more on the programme of the 2019 Sofia Science Festival. For full details of dates and times of all events, as well as how to get tickets and passes and how they much they cost (some events are free but ticketed), please visit the Sofia Science Festival website.
