Ramble Meme #1

[aragarna]

nieseryjna asked "I actually would like you to ramble about your road to science and doctorate - where you interested in science since childhood? What was the most important thing that pushed you on that road?"


Well, Nie, that's a very good question. How did I get there?
I've always enjoyed science as a kid. I wasn't "driven" by one subject in particular, but I've always enjoyed learning new things, get a better understanding of the world, and the phenomena that when you're a kid you take for granted, until you start wondering "how does this work?". I was a good student, school was easy, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed learning new stuff. So, for a long time, I've always wanted to continue studying. When I was a kid, I didn't know you could make a job to "create knowledge" somehow, but then growing up, I learned about Research and Scientists, and it seemed to be the thing I wanted to do. I didn't know what concretly it would look like, as a daily job, but yes, I think it was the idea to create knowledge and (gosh it sounds to pompuous said that way!) participate to the discovery of the world and how it works.

I've always thought that somehow, I was born too late, because the biggest discoveries have been made already. There's still a lot to discover in every scientific fields, but it's details compared to the what's been discovered in the past centuries.
One job that has always made me dream (even if I'm not sure I would actually have dared to do it) was Explorer, like Colomb or Magellan. Can you imagine what it was like to discover new lands? Actually mapping the planet as you go? Realizing it had to be round?
My biggest regret is to have been too late to witness the Moon Landing. When my mum, who was just a kid at the time, talks about it, it sounds so magical. The Moon is the modern America. Neil Armstrong is the last Christopher Colombus. And that was the first time we left Earth. Even if we ever go to Mars (which won't happen any time soon, if at all), that'll be just one step farther, the second step. It won't be the same as that first landing on another planet (even if technically the Moon is a satellite, but the symbol remains).

In high school, I enjoyed everything, but especially Physics and Chemistry. And also geology. Geology is a misunderstood science. Yes, a piece of rock looks boring. It doesn't stand a chance compared to baby red pandas... But that piece of rock can tell you incredible stories about the dynamic of Earth. Earth is moving, breathing, changing. Earth was born 4.5 Giga years ago! From a Nebula.... [...] And it all started with a Big Bang, 13.7 Gy ago! Isn't that super cool?
So, I went to a Geology School. Geology is, more practically, also a VERY important science in today's world. How do you think we find the oil for your car, or the rare metals for your phone?
But I prefer pure science. Science for the sake of science. And in that school, I discovered a new subject: geochemistry. Now, this is something fun. From the chemical composition of a rock, you can tell its age. And from there, you can date a geologic event, and even the birth of Earth. And you can do that with extraterrestrial rocks too! Meteorites, Moon samples, Martian rocks! You can unravel the whole story of the solar system! Isn't that cool or what?
Oh, and yes, well, going farther and farther into school degrees, I discovered my limits... Physics, no matter how cool it could have been to work on stuff like string theory, wasn't for me. Math is cool too, to a certain degree. But Math is just a tool for Physics and we're back to the fact I'm not a genius...
But geochemistry, a mix of geology and chemistry, I could do.
I met geochemists, passed my Master degree, and then looked for a PhD in that field.
Cosmochemistry is just a sub-specialty. The "geo" in Geochemistry refers to Earth, so when you're studying meteorites, it doesn't apply. So, it's called Cosmochemistry, which sounds even cooler.
I ended up doing a PhD in Cosmochemistry.

And as someone that understands the value of old rocks, especially extraterrestrial rocks, I was over the Moon that a White Collar episode featured a piece of Moon as something highly valuable. And I'm glad that Peter rolled his eyes at Neal's bluff about the rock turning into dust, because, well, you know, it's still just a simple piece of rock! And unless you're a cosmochemist who wants to study the oxygen isotopic composition of that piece of Moon, it just doesn't matter at all whether your rock is in contact with the terrestrial atmosphere. And even then.

And, you know, I can see that when I tell people I have a PhD, it sounds very impressive and all. But it's just that studying is what I was good at. We all have our own set of skills and talents. I liked school, I stayed in school. That doesn't make me a genius. I can't do a thing with my hands, and I've always admire crafty people, or artistic people.

Oh, and I said I was born too late. I more and more think that I was also born too early. Just a few years later, and I would have become a geek much younger, and I would have either been into computer science, or I would have become a digital designer.

Wow, that was quite a ramble. I don't promise the other will be so long!

The Ramble Meme is still open to questions

Comments

[nieseryjna.livejournal.com]

Oh whoohwww you know for me anyone that likes chemistry must be a a genius anyway :P But that was a very, very interesting ramble. In some ways I think you still can make a giant discovery we practically know nothing about Mars and other planets so maybe? :)

And as for being born too late or too early? You know we are supposedly to change jobs few times in our life's, so who knows what you will do next, if you ever decide to get into another field I mean :P

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

eheh, maybe I'll be able to use all my photoshop practice for something in the future then! ;-)

I do think I should get paid by USA for all the good PR and fannish work I do for White Collar. ;-)

[nieseryjna.livejournal.com]

You never know when your photoshop practice will be useful :)
Hmm I think all TV channels should pay their fans for great PR ;) And yup White Collar team should pay for the awesome fannish PR

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

It does help me when I have to do figures for my scientific articles, though plots are so less interesting to work with than Tim or Matt... And my general knowledge of the software made me the official photoshop expert among my colleagues during my PhD. ;-)

LOL you're probably right. It would cost them a fortune. But they don't really need to pay with money. Then can just pay us with new seasons. ;-)
And if White Collar gets that People's Choice Award, they better give us something, because we worked hard on that one!

[sholio]

Oh, how cool! :) I think that sounds really fascinating; I didn't know you had a degree in that!

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that somehow, I was born too late, because the biggest discoveries have been made already. There's still a lot to discover in every scientific fields, but it's details compared to the what's been discovered in the past centuries.
One job that has always made me dream (even if I'm not sure I would actually have dared to do it) was Explorer, like Colomb or Magellan. Can you imagine what it was like to discover new lands? Actually mapping the planet as you go? Realizing it had to be round?

That's funny you say that, because I often feel the same way. Not that the research in the lab isn't fun, but we're just expanding on what has been discovered before. Nowadays we have so many analytical methods - I'm in awe every time I think of the people who discovered the basics of chemistry with so little to go by; how much imagination they needed, how inventive and genius they were. At the same time... I don't think I would have had so much curiosity and sheer courage as they did, so maybe this is the right time for me after all - walking in their footsteps and playing in the lab, solving my little puzzles with the tools they gave us.

I'm wondering what are the next big areas that shall be explored - what questions are we going to ask? The next big inventions? What will the world look like in a hundred years or two?

Anyway, great post!

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

You're so right. :-)
What field are you in?

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

I'm in organic chemistry - hopefully I'll get my Masters in July, and then I might continue for a Ph.D. And I like it, but sometimes it feels like the focus is too narrow - in a world where there are over 50 million organic compounds known, I'm just synthesizing a handful new ones to add to that list. And maybe my research will actually be useful at some point, but sometimes it's hard to see the point.

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

Oh this is cool. :-)
Organic Chemistry was one of the things I sucked at, but it is actually an interesting field. And it's actually an important theme of research in cosmochemistry, because there's organic compounds in some meteorites.

And don't worry about the narrowity (whatever the right noun is) of your field, I guess that we all feel like we're just adding one drop in an ocean, but all oceans are made of drops. ;-) And from where you are now you'll be able to broaden your horizon by working on different projects. You'll do a lot of different things in your career. See, you could even work with cosmochemists if you wanted to. ;-)

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

You're right - and I'm really enjoying working on a different project right now :) I've been working on the old one for three years with little results, so that had me frustrated and questioning my future. Now I feel like I'm making progress every week, finding out new things about the system that I've been assigned. It might be just a tiny area of chemistry, but right now it's mine to explore and I'm enjoying every bit of it :)

Geology has never been my subject, but cosmochemistry sounds intriguing. So you're you doing research in this area? How does that work?

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

cosmochemistry is basically one theme of geochemistry. Geochemistry deals mostly with the elementary and isotopic compositions of rocks. You know, reactions create isotopic fractionations, partition of elements, that sort of things, so we're deciphering the reactions underwent by a rock.
I'm doing some chemistry experiment, and mostly, mass spectrometry analysis.

So, in cosmochemistry, we're doing that with meteorites, which are blocks of asteroids or planets, and we try to understand the chronology and history of the Solar System, or how the Earth was built, stuff like that.

There's a certain class of meteorites that hold organic matter (ie, complex molecules made of C, O, H and N. NOT from biological origin, but very similar to terrestrial organic matter), and people try to understand how you can go from those molecules to life on Earth.
For instance, there's amino-acids in that extraterrestrial organic matter, but as many L as D, while on Earth, most life forms use mainly L. So, it's similar, but different...

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

So you're basically going by the isotopic composition of them? Is that the same principle as the determination of age by the Carbon 13 method?

Aww, mass spectroscopy - loves to spoil my day :D The mixtures often look so beautiful on NMR and TLC and then Mass Spec comes, tells me I have about a million impurities there and throws it all out of the window :D

So do you think you guys will ever find the answer to the question whether life on Earth formed spontaneously or whether it was imported from space? :D

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

Yes, we're mostly going by isotopic composition. And yes, same principle than Carbon 14 (it's 14C that is radioactive and is used to date stuff.)

Life certainly didn't come from space. It appeared on Earth. But the material like amino-acids used by Life can be synthetised in dense and hot molecular clouds, so that's cool. :-) But Earth, with water just at the right temperature, is the only suitable environment suitable for Life known for now.

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

Aww, my mistake - I'm so used to the 13C NMR (13C is "visible" unlike the most common 12C) that I automatically typed it down without even thinking about it.

And how can you be so sure that life didn't come from space? I mean, obviously not any advanced life, but something like the simplest bacteria might have been able to survive even the harsh cosmic conditions, maybe trapped in ice (after all, life has been found in some insane places - extreme temperatures, high pressures, radioactivity...). But I guess at this point it becomes more academic and theoretical (and also a question for biology - when is it life already and when it's not? Obviously first you have a group of the necessary molecules, then macromolecules and at some point it becomes a bacteria - but which stage does it stop being just a a group of macromolecules and becomes "life"? We have some criteria for the organisms that are here today, but I guess you can't really apply that when you're looking at the actual beginning billions years into the past.)

Anyway I guess it doesn't really matter - even if the "core" of life came from space, it still must have developed there somehow - so you'd just be moving the problem to an unknown planet in a "reasonable" distance of Earth. But in theory, it's an interesting question - what is the impulse that takes it from an organic mess to an actual cell?

It's fun :)

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends what you call "space". In another solar system, on another planet with similarly good conditions as Earth, it's totally possible that a form a life appeared. And it would be so awesomely incredible to compare evolution there and here! (If only we could travel as fast as they do in Star Wars...)

But you need a stable and welcoming environment for life to appear, and survive. It took a Gy for life to appear on Earth. Mars was probably not viable long enough for life to appear there.

And Life on Earth developed on Earth, there's no doubts about that. The initial bricks can be synthetized abiotically, and it's probably that Life on Earth was influenced by what was available to it, but Life as we know it on Earth doesn't come from Space.

[leesa_perrie]

Oh, that was interesting and very cool. I, also, didn't know you had a PhD! :)

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

I also have a PhD on White Collar, but that's not officially recognized. ;-)

[leesa_perrie]

LOL!! Now that is totally worth studying... do you think they have classes about Neal's hair and Peter's chest?!! :) :)

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

I'd totally sign up for these classes!!! And I think I know a whole bunch of people who'd ace them :D I also vote for a class on Neal's arms and upper torso, especially while painting/sculpturing/committting crimes. (We could also have a class on his ass and legs. Oh, who am I kidding. Can we have a whole class just on Neal?)

For the brave people, there should be a class on the metaphysics of Mozzie's brain...

[leesa_perrie]

LOL!! There would be a rush of sign ups!!

For the brave people, there should be a class on the metaphysics of Mozzie's brain...

Very, very brave people indeed!! :D :D

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

LOL well, it seems Peter's chest class was 3 weeks ago. ;-)
Neal's hair is more of a recurrent theme of all classes....

[leesa_perrie]

Ah yes, but I'm sure you'd like another class on Peter's chest sometime soon...! ;) :D

[aragarna.livejournal.com]

lol sure I wouldn't mind. ;-)
Though, strangely, I'm starting missing Neal's. It was all over the place in previous seasons, and apart from a tank, we got nothing this season so far.

It seems like season 5 is to Peter/El what season 3 was to Neal/Sara.