First of all, thanks for coming back! I know I haven't posted in a very long time, and I apologise for that; despite my best intentions there were always things getting in the way of blog posting, some of which I'll tell you about in this post.
Despite not being active on the blog, I have been doing some science communication stuff, mainly with my weekly Periscope broadcasts. I'm usually on every Sunday at 16:30 CET, unless I'm travelling, which I have been doing a lot lately. Do you have a question about cosmology? If so, join me any Sunday and ask away. I probably can't answer any cosmetology questions, though feel free to try.
Apart from my own periscopes, I've managed to get several people from the Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology (TTK for short) involved in periscopes as well. You can join the conversation any Wednesday at 18:00 CET, and sporadically on other days as well. There are some great people involved, so you should definitely check it out if you haven't done so already.
Finally, I'd like to tell you about something interesting I did a few weeks ago: FameLab.
FameLab is an international science communication competition, in which scientists have three minutes (only!) to present a topic related to their research. The only props allowed are the ones you can carry on to stage yourself: no slides, no setup time, and no textbooks. I took part in the Germany Regionals, and I tried to explain cosmological perturbations (there will be a blog post on this topic at some point) using a slinky toy. You can watch my video here:
Not seen in the video: the approximately 400 members of the audience. I've always been nervous of public speaking, so this was a big challenge for me. In the end, I really enjoyed it, and despite not progressing to the next round, I feel like I learnt a lot. A few years ago, getting up on stage and doing a science slam seemed unimaginable to me. I know I wouldn't have found the courage to do it without all of the support and encouragement from everyone on Twitter and Periscope, so thanks to you all for helping me with this.
Well anyway, that's enough about my recent activities, let's talk about the future! I plan on going back to my weekly Sunday Periscope discussions on my account, and I have some good ideas for the TTK account: hopefully we'll have more guests and specific topics soon. As for this blog, I intend to start posting more regularly now. I am preparing posts about the Big Bang, the CMB, inflation, perturbations, dark matter, and many more. If you have any suggestions for topics you'd like me to cover, please let me know in the comments.
Enough rambling, there's science to be done! Expect another post soon.
