Monday, 18. September 2006
Malene and I are preparing our relocation from Copenhagen (Denmark) to Sydney (Australia). Today I was looking through a lot of papers and books at my office at the Niels Bohr Institute. A lot of ancient knowledge is buried in these dusty papers and a lot of wise thoughts have been written down in these forgotten tomes. For example, I found the notes I made for a lecture on "the twin paradox" in 1993. I think I discarded that. I found my notes for the MONS workshop held in Aarhus in 2000 (a proposal for a Danish asteroseismology satellite) and the first COROT science workshop (a French-European satellite). I kept these notes.
Also, I came across the master's thesis by Jakob Vinter from Aarhus. On the first page was a very intersting quote from one Harlow Shapley (1885-1972):
"A hypothesis or theory is clear, decisive and positive, but it is believed by no one but the man who created it. Experimental findings, on the other hand, are messy, inexact things which are believed by everyone except the man who did that work." It really sums up how I sometimes feel when working as an observational astrophysisist.