AstroBlonde

Tihi. It's always so fun to meet people who are using my homepage, AstronomiGuiden, daily! Just now I met a guy who apparently went to the Uni at the same time as Bengt Gustafsson. Bengt Gustafsson is a professor here at Uppsala Uni who is working with theoretical astrophysics (especially stellar atmospheres). He is so dedicated to astronomy that you kinda get dragged along with his enthusiasm. He is also well known in astronomy around the world and a really good scientist!

Anyway... so this guy, who educated himself at the same time as Bengt Gustafsson, saw that I was visiting AstronomiGuiden and he said "Oh, AstronomiGuiden is a good site. I visit that site every day... Did you know that they just got some money to rebuild it?". I wasn't really sure he knew that I created that homepage so I said "Uhm, yes.. I am the creator you know that don't you? I am admin on that site". Apparently he didn't but he mentioned that he had seen me in papers but didn't recognized me in person. He started to show me pictures of members on my homepage, which was really fun to see, and on a telescope they are building. It's amazing how dedicated people can be and I'm so happy that my homepage can help people to become even more dedecated into astronomy.

I was at the astro pub last Friday and I want to wish Astrid good luck in Mexico. She has got a job over there so she's moving in January.

Last Friday I was also on a presentation about the climate thingy. An Aussie, Brady, held a very good presentation about climate related stuff, which I think is very important for scientists to see. I don't agree with everything he said, but I think all these discussions about climate, LHC, world trade center, 2012 and so on is something we're gonna see much more of. Information is spread like never before now, by the internet, and it's hard for people to see what is right and wrong. Sometimes it may not even be a right or wrong, and therefore I think scientists have to find new ways of working with the public. I think scientists have to spend more time to explain stuff to the public, because if the "average" people don't understand the area most of them get the picture wrong.

It's is kinda funny tho... If you read in a paper about some celebrity doing this or that, people seem to say "Well, we don't know. It might just be rumours". But if it says "Scientists says this and that" people seem to think it is the truth and nothing but the truth. Media seem to get this and use it even more to sell papers, but in the end it can create people to panic. It is so important for people to stay objective no matter what, but it's hard when you get so much info daily. Therefore I think scientists need to spend more time trying to explain stuff to the "average" people so they can, themselfs, determine weather the info seems likely or not.

Of course the area gets even harder when politics and economy is involved. In astronomy there aren't often much money involved, so it's kind of a calm area. But for the climate change there are so much money involved that it's scary. According to me, in that area it's better to try to stay somewhere in the middle. The science is not that obvious as it may sound, but at the same time I'm sure that most of the scientists are doing their best to put a real picture out there. I'm quite sure there have been done many mistakes along the way in the reseach and perhaps money have influenced the area too much. It's hard to tell. What is important here, according to me, is to keep your mind open: Perhaps we have a climate change, but it can also be due to normal variations. When I look at it it's not as obvious as people seem to think it is, and for me there are too many things that are so unsure in this area. But sure, there's only one Earth and we should take care of it, but what is happening around the world today is too over exaggerated... According to me.

Well... I'm going out for a short walk in the snow that has just fell. The weather here in Sweden isn't really the same as for the green-house-effect-Venus: it is cold as hell here now!