Update!!
Well, she did the interview. Turns out the "publishing company" is a two man effort in an Industrial Unit over in Pompey.serena_inverse went over with Colonel K in the morning. She told us that they asked her to talk about her background and she went into brain!flail mode, muttering things like "Science! I'm good at Science, I have a degree in Science! Writing! I like writing..." It kind of went downhill from there.
She was then asked to produce an abstract of a seven page scientific paper and overran her time limit. Probably she was trying too hard too "craft" it beautifully.
Anyway she came back a fairly unhappy bear and we have to the end of the week before they "let her know". They were interviewing one person per day so she was on her own.
We've told her to look on it as a useful experience. *winces*
Shame, because even though it didn't pay much- a six-month internship writing scientific abstracts for a small enough company that she could try everything would have looked good on her CV and it would have got her off the damn fish counter at Asda.
Many Thanks to those of you who crossed fingers and otherwise offered karmic support.
Also:we didn't win the Euro Millions either.
We did go to the planetarium at Intech (near Winchester) and listened to a fascinating lecture on "Astrobiology" by Dr Lewis Dartnell of UCL. Pretty good stuff with up to date info on quite a lot of new science. Clever to look at terrestrial extremophiles as a possible "example" of exotic life forms. He took rock-dwelling bacteria from Antarctic "dry valleys" (pretty much zero available water)as a potential simulacra of Martian life forms. Then exposed them to the type of cosmic radiation barrage that Mars (with no magnetosphere to speak of and a very attenuated atmosphere) experiences. Turns out that they don't much like those conditions.
The lecture was followed by a super show using the planetarium to demonstrate where the Hubble Deep space image came from and where a new telescope will be looking along the spiral arm of our galaxy for the presence of "Earth-type" planets that are "wet and warm" as Dr. Dartnell put it. Then we did a quick tour of the radio bubble (the extent to which our radio and radar signals will have penetrated the local star cluster,)and the rest of the known Universe.
Not bad for an evening out, eh?
Also: WriterCon in 23 days!
She was then asked to produce an abstract of a seven page scientific paper and overran her time limit. Probably she was trying too hard too "craft" it beautifully.
Anyway she came back a fairly unhappy bear and we have to the end of the week before they "let her know". They were interviewing one person per day so she was on her own.
We've told her to look on it as a useful experience. *winces*
Shame, because even though it didn't pay much- a six-month internship writing scientific abstracts for a small enough company that she could try everything would have looked good on her CV and it would have got her off the damn fish counter at Asda.
Many Thanks to those of you who crossed fingers and otherwise offered karmic support.
Also:we didn't win the Euro Millions either.
We did go to the planetarium at Intech (near Winchester) and listened to a fascinating lecture on "Astrobiology" by Dr Lewis Dartnell of UCL. Pretty good stuff with up to date info on quite a lot of new science. Clever to look at terrestrial extremophiles as a possible "example" of exotic life forms. He took rock-dwelling bacteria from Antarctic "dry valleys" (pretty much zero available water)as a potential simulacra of Martian life forms. Then exposed them to the type of cosmic radiation barrage that Mars (with no magnetosphere to speak of and a very attenuated atmosphere) experiences. Turns out that they don't much like those conditions.
The lecture was followed by a super show using the planetarium to demonstrate where the Hubble Deep space image came from and where a new telescope will be looking along the spiral arm of our galaxy for the presence of "Earth-type" planets that are "wet and warm" as Dr. Dartnell put it. Then we did a quick tour of the radio bubble (the extent to which our radio and radar signals will have penetrated the local star cluster,)and the rest of the known Universe.
Not bad for an evening out, eh?
Also: WriterCon in 23 days!