I've learned many things through writing this blog. The first thing I found was my voice. Originally, I was targeting this blog to middle and high school teachers and students to give them an insight into the science of LIGO and what it is like to be a scientist. While I think that this blog has served that role to a point, I also found an audience drawn from a great community of science enthusiasts and I've been able to engage them with all of the things that I love about my job.
By far, it is my readers who have made Living LIGO what it is (and I personally think it is great). A high point for me came back in March when it was revealed that the "Big Dog" blind injection was not a real gravitational wave. I wanted to share it on my blog since this was a rare peek into how science is done. One of my readers shared it on his blog (here) which got the attention of a popular "Cosmic Variance" blog (here) and the story was then picked up by places like Discovery News (here) and various other blogs. The number of readers went from a few a day to over 1000 on that particular day (and many of those reader have now become regulars). This is something I never expected when I started writing my blog but it is very exciting for me and I hope that it has at least been interesting for you.
I usually like to post a picture with every post, but I didn't have anything particularly relevant to this so I decided to give you a peek into where I create my blog post and most of my other brilliant research - my office. It's small but it's all mine! I even have a window (which is great since fluorescent lights give me migraines) and a door:
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| If you look closely, you can see some of my collection of stuffed vampire/creepy things. |
