Last night saw the third installment of Café Scientifique Syracuse. I reported before on our successful inaugural event, at which my biology colleague, Scott Erdman, spoke about the Human Genome Project. Last month's installment turned out equally well. Our speaker was James Spencer, from Syracuse's chemistry department, speaking about From Sherlock Holmes to CSI: Chemistry as a Forensic Science, on which he teaches a very successful course. That time we moved into an even larger room (essentially a nightclub bar) in our host establishment - Ambrosia. Last night yours truly was the featured speaker, giving a talk on modern cosmology. We stayed in the large bar area in Ambrosia, and this time they left the small disco balls spinning during the whole event, which I thought helped to achieve just the right atmosphere. I don't have a great picture of the event, but Rob Salgado sent me one of the place after we'd finished and a few people were hanging around chatting. You can even see the disco balls.
Obviously, you'd have to speak to one of the audience members to get an unbiased feel for how the talk went, but I certainly had a blast. There were around fifty people there, as there were the week before, and they listened politely during my 20-minute presentation and then, when we reconvened after sushi-snacks and drink refills, asked great questions. Some questions were quite standard, such as "What was there before the Big Bang?", some were technical, like "Can we change gravity and avoid that pesky dark energy?", and some were vast, like "Strings?". But they were all worth asking, and it was pretty challenging for me as the audience bounced along from topic to topic. We've got some great stuff coming up also. On November 8th (our only violation of the "first Tuesday of every month" rule), Francis DiSalvo, who is John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and Director of the Cornell Center for Materials Research, is going to speak on Fuel Cells and Energy Policy, which should be great. Then, on December 6th, I'm hosting Mark Noble, from the Department of Biomedical Genetics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who will speak about Stem Cells. Mark has written stem cell briefing guides for the New York State Stem Cell Coalition, and should give a stimulating talk. Also, when he emailed me with a suggestion of how to organize the time during his evening in Syracuse, I was impressed that the final line was "Discussion - till last call". That's the idea! If any of you out there are thinking about organizing a branch of Café Scientifique in your area, I'd strongly encourage you to give it a go. We're having a wonderful time at ours, and the informal feedback we're getting is extremely positive. People are hungry for the opportunity to ask all kinds of questions about science, and you can make a real difference by helping them get answers.
