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Tag archives: science outreach
How LIGO got the word out about gravitational waves
Tweeting to millions: LIGO made a social-media plan before announcing the detection. (Courtesy: Sarah Tesh)
By Sarah Tesh
Nowadays, social media plays a big role in communicating science to the public. It has two important qualities – it’s free and it’s international. A great case study for social media and science came last year when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first ever detection of gravitational waves. To tell us more about how the team grabbed the public’s attention (and got its work on Sheldon Cooper’s T-shirt in The Big Bang Theory), LIGO scientist Amber Stuver gave a witty talk at the APS March Meeting 2017 about the outreach strategy.
She began by telling us the story of that exciting detection day. Before the first detection, LIGO had published 80 papers on “detecting nothing”. Yet on 14 September 2015 – the first morning of the first day of Advanced LIGO – the much-sought-after signal appeared. The first thing that had to be done was to check it wasn’t a fake. Having detected nothing for so long, those with the knowledge to do so would sometimes “inject” results to check the system worked and keep the scientists on their toes.
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Science elevator pitches in Beijing
By James Dacey in Beijing
Could you provide a short entertaining presentation of your research to a non-specialist audience, leaving them feeling both enlightened and inspired? How about trying to do it in a non-native tongue? That’s what several Chinese researchers did on Wednesday evening at the Science Slam event at the European Delegation headquarters in Beijing. The event was part of a day-long communications training workshop aimed at researchers who want to communicate their research to the general public and improve their ability to apply for research grants.
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