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Research Magazine“What we perceive as a beginning or an end depends on our interpretation”

Press Release No. 25/2023
8 March 2023

Latest edition of RUPERTO CAROLA research magazine with contributions on the thematic pair BEGINNING & END

Not being discouraged by setbacks but trying new approaches and even starting all over again – that is the principle and creed of all research and the often rocky road to new findings. Roman philosopher Seneca already described how every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. The thematic pair BEGINNING & END is the focus of the new edition of RUPERTO CAROLA, the research magazine published by Heidelberg University. Across the university’s 13 faculties, the articles on this focal theme illustrate not only what issues can lie at the beginning of a research project and what multifarious results can emerge at its end; the breadth of topics ranges from the beginning of “life” in its various facets to its end.

RuCa 21 Titel

The contributions of the 25 Heidelberg academics deal with reproductive medicine and palliative care, disappearing glaciers, languages on the verge of extinction or the response of life in the continuing transformation of nature. The 21st issue of the RUPERTO CAROLA research magazine takes up apocalyptic thinking and planning for the time after the disaster; it offers insights into the excavations from the destroyed city of Nineveh, one of the largest metropolises of antiquity, and presents new findings on the life and death of galaxies, based on observations with the James Webb Space Telescope. “What we perceive as a beginning or an end depends on our interpretation – it is not objective fact,” is one of the insights from the expert conversation in which historian Prof. Dr Stefanie Gänger and astrophysicist Prof. Dr Matthias Bartelmann compare notes about linear and cyclical concepts of time, narratives of decline and differing perceptions of crisis.

The RUPERTO CAROLA research magazine appears twice a year, mainly in German with English abstracts, and addresses all members of the university, its partners in academia, politics, business and society, and, in particular, alumni, friends and an interested public in Germany and abroad. The magazine is available from the Communications and Marketing department of Heidelberg University (Alte Universität, Grabengasse 1, phone +49 6221 / 54-2311). All editions are also accessible online via the open access publisher Heidelberg University Publishing (heiUP).