Science Editor Anoushka Sinha discusses this year’s New Scientist Live (NSLive) and the range of experiences they hosted from 18 to 20 October.
Every year, New Scientist hosts ‘the world’s greatest festival of ideas and discoveries’. NSLive replaces the exam-induced silent stress which King’s College London (KCL) students might associate with the Excel Centre with music, planetariums and robots.
Right at the entrance to the event is a collection of exhibitions from KCL – Hospital of the Future features the latest ongoing innovations in biomedical engineering. From 3D printed prosthetics to robot eye surgery, KCL’s own engineering students showed off the life-saving work being done in their department. This exhibition was voted the most popular exhibit for the last three years and, with the sheer crowd around the stalls, Roar has no doubt it will be highly rated this year as well.
On the other end of the room were two mobile planetariums from Immersive Experiences. The ten minute shows gave a quick yet informative tour of the Solar System, while the Universe Stage next door presented talks from leading Physicists and Engineers explaining everything from the inner workings of quantum computing to the search for dark matter in our Universe. Other stages featured talks on climate change, health misinformation and psychology.
The absolute variety of exhibitions which you could visit made the experience more than worth it. Being surrounded by STEM people of all ages is always fun, but being surrounded by experts and activities which range from learning to give blood tests to boarding military aircrafts is incredible.
