Andre Geim

October 9th: Precious If someone gives you a diamond proclaiming it symbolises how their love will last forever, be ready to reply: “Liar!” The precious diamonds are a material made exclusively of carbon. There is another material with the same exact composition: graphite (i.e. the lead in pencils). The only …

Hedy Lamarr

October 8th: Star Movie star Hedy Lamarr was regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world. But she was more than that. She was creative and curious. She invented an improved traffic stoplight, helped aviator Howard Hughes to speed aeroplanes by inspiring their design on fast fishes and birds, devised …

Arthur Ashkin

October 6th: Drooling Did you know that you can push stuff with light? More than that, you can use light to trap objects and move them around. Ok, the stuff has to be small, micrometric small. And the light better be a laser. And you need a lens. But this …

Rita Levi Montalcini

October 5th: Chicken Memories. Thoughts. The precious skills required to make a delicious frittata. All stored and processed in the brain. An intricate net of nerves growing around and interconnecting of which we know a lot and yet still too little. What regulates nerves growth was only discovered in the …

Travelling, geek science way

skyline
Moon-Venus-Mars Skyline – Image Credit & Copyright: Jay Ouellet

This morning I woke up staring at the skyline of Quebec city on my phone. A nice reminder of why I am doing this job.

Science is closely related to travelling, and be staring at beautiful landscapes. If you are a scientist, you probably know about those moments in which none of your experiments is working as you would like and you ask yourself why you did not follow your mother’s suggestion to study medicine or law to count on a stable carrier. And then you look at the window and a deer is peacefully wondering in the garden of the dormitory you are staying in a small cosy city in Belgium. And inevitably, you smile. Travelling! Travelling, and getting to know new research groups, sometime is what you need to remind you that all the studies you have done are worthwhile.

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