Just A Theory

I’m in Cambridge this weekend, so I’m afraid all I have for you today is the image below. It’s a recently restored photo taken in 1966 by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1, and represents the first glimpse of the Earth from the Moon. I’ve lifted it from Astronomy Picture of the Day, so go there to check out the full resolution version. Have a look around whilst you’re there, it’s a great site.

If you’re still hungry for some science, might I suggest watching Einstein and Eddington this evening on BBC2 at 9.10pm. Starring Andy Serkis and David Tennant in the titular roles, it tells the story of the relationship between the two great scientists. I’ve been looking forward to it for some time, and you can expect a full review next week. See you tomorrow for the usual Weekly Roundup, but until then I’ll let the picture do the talking:

The first ever image of Earth from the Moon

(Sorry if this post seems to be springing about all over the place - there was a mixup with the timestamping and it got posted to Saturday rather than Monday…)

This week I will finally be starting the Science Communication MSc at Imperial College. Term officially started on Saturday (yes, I’m not quite sure why either), and there is a welcome event this afternoon, but everything really kicks off tomorrow. I thought I’d lay out how I see Just A Theory changing once the course starts.

Me, Myself and I

When relevant, I plan to post about myself a little bit more. How the course is going, highlights from interesting lectures, that sort of thing. If you’re just here for the science, feel free to skip over these posts - they will all be in the Happenings category. I will try and keep it focused on actual science communication however, and not just “this is how my day went” type posts.

The Secret Ingredient Of Primary Sources

As a member of Imperial College I will have an Athens username. This incredibly useful system allows you to access hundreds of online scientific journals from any computer, courtesy of your institution’s blanket license. At the moment, it is very rare that I can write about new research directly from the peer-reviewed paper - an individual 24-hour license for one journal can cost as much as $20, and I just can’t afford that. This has been bugging me ever since starting Just A Theory, but using Athens I will be able to rely less on press releases and more on scientists own words.

Things Can Only Get Better

Or so I hope. The whole point of this course is to make me a better science communicator; I would like to think that as I progress the quality of my writing will increase. I think that in the two months or so I’ve been working on Just A Theory I’ve already made improvements, but I’ll let you be the judge of that!

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

I’m really looking forward to starting the course, but I’m also under no illusion - it’s going to be a lot of work. So far I have posted every single day since starting, but if course commitments become too intense I may have to scale back a bit. At the moment I tend to write two or three days ahead of myself to allow a bit of breathing room, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep up on the daily posts. We shall see.

Just A Theory has now been running for one whole month, so I thought I’d take some time to reflect on how well it is going. I’m happy that I’ve so far managed to post every single day, leading to a total of over 13,000 words published so far! I’m not going to pretend that everything I’ve written has been absolutely amazing, but I’m quite pleased with a few of my posts - these three on combating climate change, Prince Charles’ GM food bashing, and my review of The Genius of Charles Darwin in particular.

I’d be interested to know what my readers think. I know at the moment it is mostly friends and family (along with random Google searchers) checking out the site, so what do you guys think so far? I think my posts break down for the most part into three types: talking about science in the news (”This new thing has been discovered, isn’t it neat?”), talking about others talking about science (”Check this out, they’re getting it wrong/right”), and talking about science in general (such as the two posts on Euler’s equation this week). Which type of post do you prefer?

To encourage people to comment I’ve made it a bit easier by sticking a link to the form at the bottom of every post, in nice, big, friendly letters. Now you don’t have to scroll back up to the top of the post to make yourself heard! So, let me know what you think I’m doing well, and what I could do better.

Welcome all, to Just A Theory, my own little corner of the internet. Hopefully you are here because you have at least a passing interest in science. I love science. I love opening a newspaper to read about an amazing new discovery, with the potential to change the world. I love watching documentaries about passionate people explaining their ideas. I love the beauty of Euler’s equation, which communicates a world of mathematics in just seven symbols. I even love science fiction, despite its propensity to get the science wrong.

I think my passion for science stems from simply asking the question ‘why?’ By the time I was 7 years old, my parents had clearly had enough of answering ‘why?’ and bought me a copy of the Oxford Children’s Encyclopedia. A fantastic set of books, I still have my copy, although it has been horribly abused with broken spines, ripped pages, and everything else that makes a book lover weep. I like to see its dishevelled state as a testament to how many times I read it, as I enjoyed learning about exciting concepts such as black holes and gravity for the very first time.

Most children like learning about science (after all, who doesn’t like blowing things up in experiments) but many are turned off when the fun gives way to SATs, GCSEs, and endless learning of facts by rote. When they grow up and become adults, exposure to science is often in the form of scare stories - hardly inspiring.

It’s such a shame that these people are turned off to science. Science provides so much for us, but it is also very misunderstood by those who benefit from it every day. Part of the problem is the majority of scientists are not expert communicators. The stereotype of a bearded man in a lab coat who wanders around in a world of his own is of course exactly that, but not completely untrue. When you have devoted your entire life to one area of study, it can be very hard to explain your ideas to a media that thrives on sound bites.

In October I will be starting a course on Science Communication at Imperial College. I hope that this will lead me into a career as a science communicator, someone who can take these grand ideas and present them so they will be understood, appreciated and enjoyed by the public at large. As such, I had been planning to start this website for a few months now, but as is so often the case I put it off until the proper motivation arrived, in the form of Science Blogging 2008. I’m looking forward to the extensive programme, as well as meeting other science bloggers. Of course, I’ll post a full account after the event next month.

I hope that you enjoy Just A Theory, and find it both informative and entertaining. Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts or suggestions you may have. Your first comment will be held in a queue for moderation before appearing on the site - annoying, I agree, but comment spamming is almost as bad as the email variety. Once it has been approved, any further comments will be published immediately. Thank you for visiting, and once again - welcome.