Welcome to AGUThis week in San Francisco is the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (#AGU14),
Welcome to AGUThis week in San Francisco is the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (#AGU14), the largest gathering of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Scientists anywhere in the world.The meeting is held annually in early December at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and gives scientists from around the world a chance to present their research. People of all experience levels make appearances, from undergraduates to the most senior faculty members. The size of the meeting is truly staggering. There’s an annual tradition in many academic geology departments of figuring out how to hold final exams since the professors, grad students, and sometimes even the students taking courses are all in San Francisco for the week.This year, AGU is expecting more than 22,000 official attendees. To give that some scale, I currently work at one of the state universities in the US, a solid academic and athletic institution. The undergraduate enrollment at this university is 21,000. There will be more geoscientists filling Moscone next week than there are students at this entire university.The poster sessions are a sight to behold. You’re seeing them here, a photo taken from the roof. Each day there is a hallway filled with >2000 posters, each with a scientist there to present something. The posters change out every day, so in this one hall, there will be more than 10,000 presentations about science in the next week. See how the rows are numbered 500-1000 in this image? This image shows less than ¼ of the room. Unfortunately, for the first time in about 5 years I can’t make AGU this year; new job means lack of time and lack of travel funds for me. Maybe next year this blog will be big enough that I can crowd-fund my trip? ;) Anyway, we’ll probably cover some of the events and science presented at AGU on our twitter feed (https://twitter.com/theearthstory), and on our blog feed (http://the-earth-story.com/), so stay tuned.-JBBImage credit: AGU/WashU:https://depts.washington.edu/csclab/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/IMG_6926.JPGhttps://www.facebook.com/AmericanGeophysicalUnion -- source link
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