The Science Slam is a unique opportunity for academics and scientists to present their current research to a broader audience. Each contestant has 6 minutes to explain their research as creatively and intelligibly as possible. This year’s Science Slam event in Linz featured topics ranging from the correlation between drugs and pirated content to bending light in order to find aliens. Candidates were encouraged to let their creativity run wild and props included a golden colt, a clothes horse, and finger puppets. Audience members enjoyed watching live experiments on gravitational waves and experiencing a real exoplanet alien on stage.                                              

By popular vote, the audience declared mathematician Günter Auzinger (JKU Linz) as the winner. Using home appliances and a dance performance, he demonstrated how to ‘bend light’ and optimize exoplanet imaging by using an adaptive optics system found in large telescopes. This even helped him to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Now it’s time to cross our fingers for Günter Auzinger when he represents Upper Austria at the Science Slam State Championships on Vienna’s “Heldenplatz”.