Another Science Blog?
This is an intro to my science Blog. An overture, if you will.
Why would anyone still start a science Blog today? There are so many great popular science formats out there. Magazines, Podcasts, Youtube channels and of course Blogs. Don’t they cover everything already? And I am not even particularly well-trained as a writer. And not even a native-speaker of the English language (Please forgive me my mistakes). What could I possibly contribute?
I write for one reason mainly: Because I have thoughts that want to be shared. I am not sure if they are worth sharing, or if you actually find them interesting. They might not improve your life (sorry, no lifestyle advice here) or actually be good for anything. If best, they might provide material for fun-facts during coffee breaks at work or to break awkward silence at a first date.
As scientists, it happens so often, that we get lost in the details of our research. We often fail at taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. Sure, we manage to put our research into perspective for grant proposals or a conference talk. But most of that is a lot of bullshitting anyway. We do it, because there is money and scientific street cred at stake (nerds need both just like anyone else). Sometimes, because we truly believe, the world will benefit from our research.
But if we do take that step back, and we look at the bigger picture, we see amazing things. Techniques, for example to isolate molecules, test their properties and determine their structure, even though we can’t see it even once that whole time. We can sequence the genome of cancer cells, to find out their weaknesses so we can attack most effectively. We know the distance to all planets in our solar system and even what the air in their atmosphere is made of.
From astronomy and quantum physics to life sciences and medicine, scientists provided us with so many methods to study our systems, and all of them are overwhelmingly complicated. This is due to the system itself, I would say. If it were easy to study, it would already have been done. We try to do, what no one has done before (unless they didn’t publish it for whatever reason).
I like to take that step back here and there. I find science as a whole genuinely interesting, and it is satisfying to be involved in it. In this Blog, I will share some of these amazing methods with you. You will learn how they work, and why they are so awfully complicated. You will see why we use them, even though they are so expensive and might (purely economically speaking) never pay off. And you will get some more insights into the world of science, from the point of view of someone who is right where the magic happens.
However, most of the time… nothing happens.
