Space Cafe Tokyo, Nov 2026 "Lost" in Space, On Purpose

About this event

"'Lost' in Space, On Purpose: How VR is Changing the Way We Explore the Universe" From the planets next door to galaxies billions of light-years away, our picture of the universe is built almost entirely from light we can never touch and increasingly, from datasets too vast and too complex for any human to take in by eye. The next generation of telescopes, like the giant SKA Observatory and the Vera Rubin Observatory, will only widen that gap, capturing the sky in staggering detail. In this talk, Dr. Lucia Marchetti will start with a tour of what we currently know about the universe and the extraordinary structures within it, from star-forming clouds to galaxies and the cosmic web that connects them. She will then take you inside the UCT/IDIA Visualisation Lab, which she directs, to show how they're using digital planetaria and Virtual Reality to turn that data into three-dimensional worlds you can step into and explore. Drawing on recent examples from the scientific literature, she will show how VR, via iDaVIE, is already helping astronomers make sense of complex cosmic structures and how the same tool is opening up new ways of approaching complex data also in other scientific fields. Speaker info: Dr. Lucia Marchetti is a Senior Lecturer in Astronomy at the University of Cape Town and Director of the UCT/IDIA Visualisation Lab. She holds a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Padua, Italy. Her research focuses on multi-wavelength galaxy formation and evolution, strong gravitational lensing and big data visualisation (exploiting both planetaria and VR technology). She is an active member of several international collaborations within Vera Rubin, Euclid, 4MOST and MeerKAT surveys. A dedicated science communicator, she coordinates Soapbox Science South Africa. She is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Division J – Galaxies and Cosmology Steering Committee, of the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP), and of the African Astronomical Society (AfAS) as the co-founder or the African Planetarium Association. Speaker's website: https://lucia-marchetti.github.io/www/ (https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Flucia-marchetti.github.io%2Fwww%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGRvZgVicmlkETFXVjBJZlV4T2REQ29kNzhtc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtlcBEU7Ikt2dBbDahmSy-qrlYmsivMv3vp5mp89P2Ax3G09ghq1qeXKPH0q_aem_hrXRph2UUnRNgeyeKmPAmA&h=AUCp0IW6728c-c5SvEkaRIBZ3YN6e2vYaiteD-1hE7D5nPB3JVMrvrtHf7vU5s20tFPQ3IBrC_eZRp0MpN6WfA4SaYwsEdnDX-CzNqlZVxaeURxipIA9AJVOz73JkvflwZaMpgsV1CmZsPw4H3G-xQ&__tn__=q&c[0]=AUAPMjLG6UO2v5OIBH6W3q9ltQzE9cRrsISlLR0F_S9Yl4_zvo_QbBUwTl3suz3az7WrdIlrZwGKWhlVXv8QUtNW1mpCbQeRv8rtpFoEtUlZIsw6Hk2Kc8VQNXsbHz-zo5LBm97Expm0VHil4pHYNsjiaBPpAA_XfVE) Speaker's facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lucia.marchetti.351 (https://www.facebook.com/lucia.marchetti.351?__cft__[0]=AZj5kTeL_fLatUC276wlgsA1W6arBExn5cczxIYTdIov8qGq5psh3nlgxmqaE12tnaY1rAFIsTZ6a1Mt9YHZNMDuDa1b9GAh2nBBXoSB9YUqJdsoKyLo1Q65VSkECLKuY9IQ&__tn__=q) Speaker's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luci_amarchetti/ (https://www.instagram.com/luci_amarchetti/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGRvZgVicmlkETFXVjBJZlV4T2REQ29kNzhtc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHg2BwzTZIVsNtMh6Cek0Aj7B0fiGStcjikgs9HrA3AgQd2b8quFU09AAt-sE_aem_z3s7CMrnleodMUPTbKQU-Q) Speaker's LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lucia-marchetti-a2606327 (http://www.linkedin.com/in/lucia-marchetti-a2606327?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGRvZgVicmlkETFXVjBJZlV4T2REQ29kNzhtc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHog0NfMg5UFrMX0wGmdFS2II28pezgHDiHXxsHHFzYE8OFosFEhJjwUjRKRu_aem_Je0Li96sd4rqoAVfhmU8NQ) UCT/IDIA Visualisation Lab: https://vislab.idia.ac.za/ (https://vislab.idia.ac.za/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGRvZgVicmlkETFXVjBJZlV4T2REQ29kNzhtc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHto7TCTMzxXOLZdSAEVdKb3uj0-5Ld92Cowubf-5mOD17PopoWO1qOh4cXQm_aem_awNENd5y_xXKQeR31742sQ) Soapbox Science South Africa: https://soapboxscience.org/ (https://soapboxscience.org/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAcGR