Written by Tiare Rivera from Seti.cl
Something unusual happened yesterday: I attended to an astronomy talk in my city. Considering that I live in Chile that should be normal, but most of the astronomical excitement is concentrated at Northern Chile and I live at the center.
The young astronomer who gave this talk is called Rodrigo Herrera and he was born in my city, Rancagua. He is studying his doctoral degree in Maryland US, and he took a few days off from his summer holidays to come back at these southern lands. Thanks to the efforts of the local municipality he was able to give a talk about the "Invisible universe" to some students and general public, and of course, some local educational and cultural authorities.
His talk was focused on 3 main areas: The construction of the ALMA Observatory, the study of our universe at different wavelenghts and the scale of the universe, which was very inspiring and impressive for those young students. But, solar flares and the end of the world at 2012 was inevitable. His first warning was a full page cover from the most popular newspaper in Chile mentioning a "solar tsunami" coming toward us, on which he explained the bad use of the phrase and how media tends to scare and exagerate these astronomical and normal phenomenona; being able to calm down the increase of questions that started to arise after watching the newspaper cover.
Then, he started to debunk the arguments about 2012 issues, explaining that most of this industry is moved by money supported by false "scientific facts". Rodrigo has studied some of the old Mayan references, so he was more than prepared to calm down this anxiety. Then, he gave me the microphone to be able to talk to students, about the alliance between my site seti.cl and 2012hoax.org and the free spanish material they will be able to find to increase the "real" scientific knowledge about this area. Besides, I recommended to always search, investigate about everything they have a special curiosity and not just to claim as true the first thing they hear from popular media.
Fortunately, Chile is not under such a paranoia yet, most of the questions at the end of the talk were about multiuniverses, black holes, the twin paradox and an incredible interest in science and physics.
Science is still part of young people minds, which is an inspiring impulse to continue our job.
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Tiare Rivera Taiba.-
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"Do you ever think about things you do think about?" - Henry Drummond to Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind