It may appear that I haven't been busy lately because of the death of posts here at The Astronomist. You would be right to suspect that in reality I have actually been extremely busy. I passed my general exam here at the University of Washington and I am now a proto-doctor or a PhD candidate as it were. Regardless, now that this hurtle is out of the way I just have to do a thesis. In the spare time I have been up to so many other things. I did an interview with WHAT which is an organization that aims to raise a discussion about philosophy, science, and culture. They are based out of Spain, but the idea is international and focuses on people. I was interviewed as part of their series sobre el futuro or about the future where I talked about the future of the universe and the future for humans on Earth. I really, like the quote they caught from me, "No creo que ningún astrónomo piense que estamos solos en el Universo." You can watch the interview here.
Next up I am traveling to Lindau Germany once again to cover the Lindau Nobel Laureate Conference. I will be writing with the Nature blog team. I am very excited to be returning to Lindau this year. I first covered the Lindau Nobel Laureate conference in 2010 and at the time I really didn't know what to expect. I found that Lindau is an amazing place where ideas are exchanged at a rapid pace and discussions of science and the future are pervasive. I love it. I will be attending the conference from the journalist perspective of course so I will be interviewing people, including Nobel Laureates, while at the same time learning and communicating what I discover to a larger audience. If you haven't heard of the Lindau conference before (or even if you have) I recommend checking out the Lindau Mediatheque where they have videos of the lectures given by the Laureates. I am already blogging over on the Lindau blog; the conference starts on July 1st and lasts an entire week. Please go check it out and I will talk to you again from Germany.