Science week in Canberra
This week, Austalia celebrates National Science Week, with a variety of activities, talks, workshops and more designed to encourage an interest and awareness of science. With another PhD student from UQ I’ve been invited down to Canberra to do science shows and workshops with students in one of the suburbs here.
Last night, we gave a public lecture - two in fact, one each in a double billing. My talk was on “A Journey into a Black Hole”, which describes the life of a star and how some lucky (?!) stars make that transition into the ominous sounding “black hole”, and then describes what we might experience if we were to travel into a black hole. Could we travel to other universes? What is the event horizon? It’s always great fun to give, and always inspires some interesting questions from the audience.
Jenny Riesz then gave a talk on climate change, titled “Our fragile Earth”. She describes the current (overwhelming) evidence for human-induced climate change, particularly global warming, and paints a rather terrifying picture of the future if we fail to act now. Simple things like using new energy efficient light bulbs, choosing low power usage whitegoods, and driving a petrol efficient car can all make a big difference. The audience were all suitable impressed, and hopefully a grass roots movement can really make a difference.
All in all, a good evening. Today, we’re doing shows at the local shopping centre - hopefully we get a bit of an audience!