Now it has finally succeeded in directly measuring gravitational waves predicted 100 years ago in Einstein's general theory of relativity. It's the last big piece to fall into place in our theory of gravity. The measurement of gravitational waves was conducted with the two LIGO experiments in the United States in 2015. The discovery ranks among the largest in physics, in line with the discovery of the Higgs particle in 2012 and must be high on the list for this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. Gravitational waves, which are vibrations in the structure of space-time itself, occur when large masses are accelerated strongly. The event seen by LIGO came from two black holes more than...

Although it is called 'global warming', it is very much local with climate change. The UN climate report answers questions such as: what are the effects of global warming? How do we mitigate them? How do we adapt? Here in Denmark, we are not particularly vulnerable and can adapt. However, we still need to quantify the rise of the sea, the sizing of sewers and the heat waves of the future. That is the only way to resist and perhaps even exploit inevitable climate change. And it can go very wrong if the wild weather hits us unprepared. We saw this during the storms Bodil and Allan and the Copenhagen torrential rains...

Agenda: 1st Report for the year 2015. 2. Presentation of accounts for 2015. 3. Presentation of the budget for 2016. 4. Determination of the quota for 2017. 5. Members of the Executive Board, cf. Statutes. 6. Choice of auditor. 7. Optional

In the autumn, Allerød tile pit was protected. It was in Allerød tile pit that Hartz and Milthers found traces of an abrupt climate change in 1901 at the end of the last ice age. The find has been confirmed in excavations throughout northern Europe and the period has been given the international name, "Allerød". It later turned out that during the end of the Ice Age, the climate in Denmark first warmed for 1800 years, then it turned cold again for 1000 years and then, 11,700 years ago, the Ice Age ended completely. The ice cores have revealed 25 abrupt climate changes, and as we can follow developments year by year, we can gain insight into,...

We often hear about record melting from the Greenland ice sheet, about giant icebergs being ripped loose, and about rapidly rising sea levels. In recent decades, the methods of observing the Ice Sheet have become many, and all point to increasing mass loss. But what exactly is record melting? And how has the ice sheet reacted to past temperature fluctuations ? In this lecture, all the new methods used to detect the melting of ice will be talked about. The same for the methods is that they have not been in operation for a very long time and can therefore take into account natural fluctuations in temperature. at...

COP21 in Paris was a reasonable success. World leaders are finally understanding the threat of global warming. However, not everyone is yet convinced that it is human consumption of fossil greenhouse gases that has a direct impact on our climate. One of the arguments for the climate not being influenced by increased CO2 concentrations is that in the past – in at least one case – the earth has experienced a strong ice age at a time when the planet was otherwise apparently in a super-greenhouse environment with an estimated CO2 pressure of up to 16x the pre-industrial level. This occurred to 445 million...

Greenland's Ice Sheet loses mass in connection with the warming that has occurred during the last 20 years. There is a lot of uncertainty in the forecast of what the mass loss will be like in the future, especially because the many ice flows do not behave in a predictable way. The deep ice cores through Greenland's Ice Sheet contain a lot of information about previous warm climate periods. By studying the warm period of the past, we can learn about the mass loss of ice caps during warm climate periods and this can improve our knowledge and bring uncertainty down to forecasts of sea level changes in the future. During the years 2008-2011, an international research team drilled a 2538...

An organism is constructed of specialized cells. Cells optimize the survival of the organism; For example, vein cells move around a blood clot in a pattern that extends the bloodstream. During foetal development, specialized cells are formed from stem cells, our spare parts stock. If we can control stem cell differentiation we will be able to cure diabetes with the patient's own cells.

The third language of life after the genome and proteome is considered to be the glycome. The glycome of a cell is complex carbohydrates on proteins and lipids, and more than 2% of the cell's genes are used for synthesis and decomposition of the glycome. Carbohydrates are found as long branched chains with very high structural variation, and each carbohydrate structure has very specific roles for virtually all biological conditions in a cell and organism. Today, for example, more than 100 diseases are known that are caused by a lack of carbohydrate enzymes. Technical barriers have long hampered analysis of specific functions of carbohydrates, but with new geneditization techniques (ZFN, TALENs, CRISPR/Cas9) can...

The year 2015 is the International Year of Light of UNESCO. Light and light control have created a wide range of cutting-edge technologies, such as LED and laser light sources. The laser has resulted in 18 Nobel Prizes and is also the foundation for optical communication on which the Internet is built. It has been shown that checking light signals with other light pulses allows you to control optical data signals with enormous bandwidth and with ultra-fast response and precision. By exploring such optical methods, there is the possibility that one can dramatically reduce the energy consumption of the Internet and still support the growing need for bandwidth. This will...