Recommended by us: Science Pie - A podcast about physics, history, literature and much more

Dennis Schulz, a physics student, and Annika Brockschmidt, a history and German student, are two podcast enthusiasts based in Heidelberg (Germany).

They created the independent podcast Science Pie, focussing on the variety of subjects science can offer. Their topics range from history to physics, from literature to engineering, in particular interdisciplinary work - a range of topics hard to find in the jungle of podcasts. They often use interviews with an involved researcher or professor as a base for the episodes.
And all of this is provided in a bilingual version (English/German) and a special care for details.

Dennis and Annika’s podcast successfully meets the effort of joining science curiosities, interesting stories about people and a collection of knowledge and facts on history, literature and myths. Join them and enjoy!

AstronomiAmo

Domani saro' ospite della trasmissione web dell'Associazione AstronomiAmo  per parlare di "Stelle di neutroni e buchi neri come laboratori per la rivelazione di materia oscura".

La serata e' condotta da Stefano Capretti e sara' trasmessa in diretta sulla pagina web dell'associazione e sul canale Youtube, nel quale trovate tutte le trasmissioni precedenti e che vi invito caldamente a seguire.

Appuntamento domani, Martedi' 19 Gennaio alle 21:30.

La locandina dei prossimi eventi online organizzati dall'Associazione AstronomiAmo.

Aggiornamento: Ecco il video della serata

Meetings in Lisboa

Right before Christmas I visited Lisbon to attend a conference and a workshop held at the Instituto Superior Técnico. It was a great opportunity to come back to Portugal after almost one year and meet a lot of friends and colleagues there.

Visit to Shangai

Many things have happened in the last few weeks, including the Centenary of General Relativity. On November 25th, I wanted to write a post on this event, but I couldn't because I was visiting Cosimo Bambi's gravity group at Fudan University in Shangai and, as it is infamously known, Google products (including this webpage) are inaccessible from China. None of the standard workaround really worked for me so, as a part of my Chinese trip, I have experienced how one feels being without access to gmail, google maps, facebook, etc... (it turned out to be not that bad in fact..)

During the visit, we had a mini-workshop with astrophysicists Javier Garcia-Martinez (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), Thomas Dauser (Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Matt Middleton (Cambridge) who are working on different aspects of the electromagnetic emission from accretion disks as a possible way to measure the black-hole spin.

Shangai's skyline as viewed from one of the skyscrapers of Fudan University. The city is simply ENORMOUS..

Recommended by us: Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity postulates explained by a teenager

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Eighteen-year-old student Ryan Chester has just won US$400,000 for this video explaining Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity as part of the inaugural Breakthrough Junior Challenge - an international competition that aims to inspire the next generation of scientists and science communicators. And it’s not hard to see why. If you heard the words, "Einstein’s Special Theory of--" and tuned out because it’s all too hard, we have a feeling Ryan will change your mind.

 Original Sciencealert article here

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TAUP 2015 or On my first international conference

Mr. What and Mr. Why

Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP), is an international biennal conference arrived at its XIV edition. It covers topics from cosmology and particle physics, to trans dark matter and neutrino physics and to continue with high energy astrophysics, cosmic rays and gravitational waves. Theoretical perspectives as well as experimental strategies and developments are included.

TAUP is born at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and we are equal in
age, besides that, because of the biennal frequency, it is a sparkling teenager. About me, well...  I am already a PhD student and I have attended the conference with a nice group of colleagues.

Visit to EGO-VIRGO

A meeting of the theoretical and experimental groups of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) working on the detection of gravitational waves and on theoretical aspects related to them was held at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina, near Pisa.

The site hosts Virgo, a detector of gravitational waves which -in one year from now- will be ready to join its U.S. cousin Ligo in the decade-long search of gravitational waves from compact objects.

Me standing in front of one of the 3-km long arms of Virgo. Is the motion due to the passage of a gravitational wave? Hope not since the detector is still offline...

What is a gravitational wave?