With less than two months left before the scientific and technological gathering of some of the brightest minds on the blockchain, we at @steemstem and @utopian-io have some updates for you! In this post, we have some exclusive sneak-peeks of the location where the Utopian.io team will be staying and holding an exclusive open source hackathon.

The Utopian.io team members scheduled to attend this meetup will be staying together at a villa in the town of Lucca in Italy. While the place looks like a perfect spot for a relaxing vacation, we plan to spend much of the time collaborating on innovative new features for Utopian and its community. It’s why we made sure to select accomodation with wireless internet access and laptop-friendly workspaces.

Source: Airbnb

This lovely villa is due to accommodate all 17 registered Utopian team members attending, and host the guests to join us for the hackathon only. This means at least some of the team members will be sharing beds, so we’re expecting some bring home (to you) some funny stories, crazy livestreams and awesome photos and videos.

About Lucca

Located between Pisa and Florence, Lucca is a medieval gem of history, art and culture dating back to 180 BC. Also nicknamed “the town of 100 churches”, Lucca is the home to some architectural masterpieces worthy of a visit including the Cathedral of St. Martin that also serves as an art museum, and St. Michael’s Church.

Source: jimmyweee from wikipedia CC BY 2.0

Lucca is one of the only Tuscan cities spared aerial bombings in WWII, so its archeological and historical landmarks remain untouched and well preserved. One of the most famous ones is the medieval city wall surrounding the town, 4 kilometres and 223 metres turned pedestrian promenade and cycling path, offering a scenic route around the historic town.

Though our time to tour and sightsee will be limited, Lucca can tempt us away from the keyboard with Orto Botanico Comunale di Lucca (botanical garden dating from 1820) and the narrow scenic streets of this ancient Italian town at the foot of the Apuan Alps.

Source: Alessandro Vecchi from wikipedia CC BY 3.0

Another building that represents the city as an unusual one is Torre Guinigi - a tower with a garden on top! It was built when the Guinigi family sought to create a garden above the town as symbol of the town’s rebirth while under their control. This popular tourist attraction might be a long climb (230 steps), but it offers a unique view of the city and its surroundings.

Lucca takes great pride in being the birthplace of the famed composer Puccini, so music lovers will be able to attend daily concerts of the local composer’s music in the Church of San Giovanni. His biggest fans might even find the time to visit his old home turned museum.

About the Hackathon

As we work hard to organize and crowdfund this international operation, we’re also working on a fun, exciting and global mini-hackathon to take place during the Utopian.io gathering in Italy. Anyone can participate from anywhere in the world, and we hope you will too.

The Utopian.io mini-hackathon is scheduled to take place on one of the very few free days we will have at the villa in Lucca, when not touring Virgo and the Museum in Florence. If you happen to be in Italy in September and are interested in attending, please contact @techslut or @espoem on our Discord server.

The exact dates and times of the hackathon and more details will be revealed in future posts, so stay tuned for more updates!

–@techslut

Help us get there!

Many of our attendees from both @steemstem and @utopian-io are traveling from Asia and Africa to attend and contribute. The goal of this @fundition campaign is mainly to crowdfund the cost of travel from these places, including necessary visa applications and travelers’ insurance. We hope you’ll choose to help us with a small donation or an upvote because every upvote counts!

The Meetup

For more information on this meetup and our expected schedule, check @steemstem’s post and @utopian’s post.

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM & Utopian.io Meetup in Italy - Utopian.io Team Accommodation & Mini-Hackathon

Welcome to the 67^th issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM aims to make Steem a better place for STEM, a task which we believe crucial for the long-term development of the blockchain. Our goals consist in invigorating and inspiring the minds of a community of STEM aficionados on Steem, targeting on the long-term the upgrade of SteemSTEM as a real platform for science communication. In the meantime, this goes through the support of quality, interesting and cutting-edge STEM content. For more details, a recent update on the SteemSTEM project is available here. If you want to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server. In order to support the best STEM content on Steem, our team scours the blockchain and read more than a couple of thousands of STEM-related posts per week. We hence support about 200 of these posts, and present in this distilled our top 8 handpicked choices for the last Thursday-Sunday period. ## Monday - Wednesday ___

### Introduction to Cryptography I: Encryption (Pt. 4 - Block Ciphers/Modes of Operation) Our week opens with a very interesting post by @lemony-cricket. Do you want to learn more about encryption? Then this is a piece you should read!

### Smart Cards, A chip with so much applications @henrychidiebere has written a great post on smart cards. How many applications does this technology have in our lives? The answer is a lot and for more information you now know which post to read.

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Wednesday - Friday

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### Particle physics - exercise 1d solution And for the physics lovers coming up next a particle physics post by @irelandscape that you will love!

### Need For Approval & External Validation Who doesn’t love @abigail-dantes’ psychology posts? This week she writes about our search for validation and approval from others. Why is it that we seek confirmation from our environment to define our “self value”? @abigail-dantes explains it all very well!

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Saturday - Sunday

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### Which is better for your solar system installation; PWM or MPPT charge controller Some more technology for you is here with a great post by @sunkanmi02 discussing the two alternatives for you solar system installation. Which one is best? Read his post and find out.

### Schistosomiasis; An Overview of a Neglected Tropical Disease And our week closes with an interesting health post by @herbayomi. The topic? Schistosomiasis, a disease easily spread through contaminated freshwater especially in tropical areas. If you want to learn more, you shouldn’t miss this one!

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A few words about the nomination process

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For some time, the editorial team behind this distilled series is made of a one-woman-team, @ruth-girl, and she chooses her favorite posts (potentially discussing with other curators and/or the management). Posts written by the SteemSTEM team are excluded from the nomination process.

Please do not be discouraged if you did not make it on this issue. We are picking up in total 14 posts a week out of more than 200. The chances are thus low ;) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing could be more effective.

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Authors upvoted by the SteemSTEM team

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In the spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @utopian-io, @curie, our delegators, our trailers and our manual curator supporters, we release every week the list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team.

From July 8 to July 15, we rewarded 155 different authors who have written a total of 222 different articles. The 121 authors who received votes from @steemstem, @utopian-io and @curie all together that week are:

@abdulmath, @abigail-dantes, @agbona, @ajpacheco1610, @akiripromise, @albatar, @alexbeyman, @amestyj, @anaestrada12, @ancolie, @anyes2013, @ari16, @astromaniac, @astrophoto.kevin, @aximot, @azulear, @cataplum, @charitybot, @chloroform, @clement.poiret, @conficker, @cryptoitaly, @dber, @deathbatter, @dedicatedguy, @digitalplayer, @djoi, @dragibusss, @drifter1, @egotheist, @eleonardo, @eliaschess333, @elocuenciadsnuda, @elvigia, @emperorhassy, @endopediatria, @ennyta, @erh.germany, @eurogee, @fancybrothers, @felixrodriguez, @filotasriza3, @florae, @ftxft, @funmiakinpelu, @gaescla, @germanmontero, @golddeejay, @gra, @herbayomi, @heros, @highonthehog, @hogarcosmico, @ideas-abstractas, @iguana78, @insight-out, @iradyjr, @irelandscape, @issavets, @jfermin70, @joelagbo, @josedelacruz, @joseg, @khrisaeroth, @kingabesh, @lawkay, @lesshorrible, @lianaakobian, @luiscd8a, @lupafilotaxia, @masterwriter, @menoski, @miroslavrc, @moisesmcardona, @moshroom, @mountainwashere, @mr-aaron, @mr-sakariyau, @mrbreeziewrites, @mscdigital, @nicomax, @olajidekehinde, @olasamuel, @oluwoleolaide, @omaqiin, @osariemen, @pagliozzo, @pangoli, @paololuffy91, @parejan, @phage93, @pmdmunton, @procrastilearner, @quantum-wave, @rharphelle, @rnunez09, @robotics101, @romulexx, @rosemery, @rubies, @samest, @samminator, @saunter, @scarletmedia, @sebbbl, @sonius94, @star-vc, @starrichie, @steempsych, @steepup, @supersoju, @synick, @teekingtv, @thekittygirl, @thurllanie, @trumpman, @tsoldovieri, @ufv, @uma58, @valth, @viannis, @whentone, @writeit, @xbae, @zoneboy

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_{[Credits: @hightouch]}

All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities.

See you all next MonTuesday for a new distilled!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Distilled #67

As Utopian and SteemSTEM slowly yet relentlessly merge like a pair of giant black holes gravitationally bound to one another, it’s worth considering what these two groups of brainiacs are actually going to get up to when they finally collide.

Famously now, one primary goal is to enjoy the tremendous and exciting privilege of visiting the Virgo Interferometer near Pisa, Italy, but there’s so much more food for the mind and soul in Italy to enjoy.

So we decided to go on an intellectual tour of historic Florence!

The Natural History Museum of Florence

This museum is also known as La Specola - The observatory, in reference to the observatory that was founded there in 1790. As you can imagine, the museum has a pretty rich history of its own, and its foundations lie in the Medici Family.

Dynastic beginnings

The House of Medici goes way back to the 12th century, when the Medicis, recently formed, used banking and commerce skills to rise in power, wealth and influence all around Florence.

Cosimo The Elder, by Alessandro Pieroni - Public Domain

In 1434, when their dynasty was in its prime, Cosimo the Elder ruled Florence as an ‘uncrowned monarch’ his entire life. During this time, Cosimo was devoted to the arts and humanities and as a result, Florence blossomed into a cultural centre of renaissance. Suddenly, the City’s name, translated in English as flourish, had a much deeper meaning.

The Medici family continued to support famed artists and thinkers (including three mutant ninja turtles!) like Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Galileo Galilei (who was not a mutant turtle), even commissioning some of them for various projects.

After some ups and downs, the Medicis reached their peak around 1512, continuing to influence Europe with their love of the arts, while spreading their genetic makeup around the continent.

By the time the rule of the Medicis came to an end, Italy was left with a beautifully developed region heavily influenced by this dynasty, with a proud history of talent and beauty over three centuries.

But Florence isn’t entirely about external beauty. It’s what’s on the inside that counts, you know?

La Specola’s Hippo

The Medici’s humanities-loving legacy also left us with the observatory, which, among other things, houses an extremely bizarre stuffed hippo.

No you didn’t read that wrong. Here’s a sneak preview:

Available under Fair Use

This is not some random stuffed prize, however. As it turns out, this hippo was the pet of Cosimo III, direct descendent of Cosimo the elder. For exotic reasons, he decided to keep the hippo, letting it roam around the astonishingly beautiful Boboli Gardens, located a stone’s throw away from the natural history museum:

Ed Webster, CC 2.0

But the hippo is not alone, thankfully, accompanied by an almost infinite number of (badly) stuffed exotic animals and disturbing anatomical models from wax. I’ve had a look at these and trust me, they are dis-tur-bing. Ever seen a decapitated lower body with twins eternally cuddled together inside? Well, there’s 24 rooms of simiilar stuff, free of charge!

Aside from the hippo, another masterpiece comes in the form of Botticelli’s Venus… only with all her guts on display, lungs, blood vessels and all.

Botticelli’s Venus. Not quite what we’re going to see there… - Public Domain.jpg)

La Specola is a contrasting gem among Florence, a city so beautiful that many visitors suffer from Stendhal Syndrome, a condition that causes dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations as a result of experiencing such otherworldly majesty. It may be refreshing to take a deep breath of fresh air from Boboli Gardens before diving into a nightmarish museum of skinless heads and wax fetuses for a while.

Around and about

The Natural History Museum is, of course, not the only interesting thing in the area. In fact, right across the river are 5 other museums that fit a ‘collection’ of museums from the Medici Dynasty, including:

• Giardino dei Semplici - The third oldest Botanical Garden in Europe

• Museum of Botany

• Museum of Geology and Paleontology

• Museum of Mineralogy & Lithology

• National Museum of Anthropology & Ethnology

So if 3 million zoological specimens spread around rooms named things like ‘The Hall of Skeletons’ makes you thirsty for more, Florence has brain food by the truck load! The city is clearly much more than first meets the eye.

Excited?

–@mobbs

The Meetup

For more information on this meetup and our expected schedule, Check @steemstem’s post and @utopian’s post. Seats are running out, so if you want to be a part of it, be quick!

Thanks to fundition.io for supporting this wonderful collaboration

References: History of Medici Family | Italoamericano.org | The Hippopotamus in Florentine Zoological Museum ‘La Specola’: A discsussion of Stuffed Animals as Sources of Cultural History

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM & Utopian.io Meetup in Italy - More on the Natural History Museum of Florence

Starting today, the distilled series will move back to a once-a-week rhythm, to be posted on Mon/Tuesday each week. Instead of a mid-week distilled, we will discuss varied topics of interest to the community.

What better way to start the day than by grabbing a cup of coffee and reading the latest News from SteemSTEM post, so that you can learn about what we are currently working on?

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Our Distilled Series

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From now on, the distilled will be posted on Mondays (or sometimes Tuesdays). Our favorite one-woman edition team (@ruth-girl) will still be in charge of finding 6 gems among all our supported posts: 2 from the beginning of the week, 2 from the middle of the week and 2 from the end of the week.

The list of authors supported by the @steemstem partnership with @utopian-io and @curie will still be provided, as well as a few statistics.

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Towards a SteemSTEM User Interface

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We are currently working hard on the development of our own user interface on Steem.

This will allow us to increase the visibility of the high-quality authors we support through filtering the blockchain of the posts that do not pass our quality requirements. Moreover, this UI will come with several additional features allowing us to better emphasize the various STEM categories, a whitelist of users visible no matter whether they get our support our not, promotion tools, login via Steemconnect, etc.

That said, it’s important to remember that this is only the first step towards building a full STEM communication platform on Steem.

Perhaps you would enjoy a screenshot… for fun:

More information will be made available in the following weeks.

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Our Meetup @ Virgo Labs

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The preparation of the upcoming joint SteemSTEM / Utopian.io meetup at Virgo Labs, close to Pisa in Italy, is slowly moving on.

We have started a @fundition campaign to support the expenses of the participants as much as possible. We have already secured almost 250 STEEM (from post payouts and donations).

Please help us to cover the costs of the 29 confirmed participants from both the SteemSTEM and Utopian-io communities by visiting our last campaign update.

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A SteemSTEM Public Relations Team

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We are proud to pre-announce the birth of our PR team to be managed by @katerinaramm.

The goal will be to ensure the presence of SteemSTEM on other social media like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and possibly more. One could even dream about a future SteemSTEM wikipedia page!

This will open new horizons to promote the SteemSTEM project and its authors outside Steem.

Our plans include the introduction of the project to the outside world, a promotion of the most interesting blog posts and discuss with and attract potentially new contributors to Steem.

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Curation

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Please find below our current curation statistics in terms of the number of votes posts, the number of supported (unique) authors and the usage of the weekly available voting power.

Moreover, during the last two weeks, @steemstem supported with more than a (possibly split) full vote the following authors: @abigail-dantes, @akiripromise, @alexander.alexis, @carloserp-2000, @conficker, @dber, @deathbatter, @egotheist, @funmiakinpelu, @gra, @greenrun, @lemouth, @mathowl, @mobbs, @mountainwashere, @nonzerosum, @procrastilearner, @ruth-girl, @samminator, @teekingtv

We are expecting them to strongly engage the community in return :)

See you all next Mon/Tuesday for a distilled!

This page is synchronized from the post: News from SteemSTEM - 18 July 2018

Welcome to the 66^th issue of SteemSTEM Distilled, a curation effort by the members of the @steemstem team.

SteemSTEM aims to make Steem a better place for STEM, a task which we believe crucial for the long-term development of the blockchain. Our goals consist in invigorating and inspiring the minds of a community of STEM aficionados on Steem, targeting on the long-term the upgrade of SteemSTEM as a real platform for science communication. In the meantime, this goes through the support of quality, interesting and cutting-edge STEM content. For more details, a recent update on the SteemSTEM project is available here. If you want to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to join the steemSTEM discord server. In order to support the best STEM content on Steem, our team scours the blockchain and read more than a couple of thousands of STEM-related posts per week. We hence support about 200 of these posts, and present in this distilled our top 8 handpicked choices for the last Thursday-Sunday period. ## Thursday ___

### What is a Chicken? - 100 Years of Playing God A great post by @pmdmunton teaches us some amazing facts about… chickens! After reading this, you’ll certainly look at your fried wings with different eyes!

### How toxic metabolites accumulation may be blocked by compounds found in red wine and green tea. @starrichie here has given us a beautiful post on green tea and red wine. If you want to learn what’s hiding in those popular drinks, then you know which post to read!

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Friday

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### Unknown Insect #4 under the Microscope 🔬 @supersoju gets an insect under her microscope and we follow her! This is indeed a cool post you would love to check out!

### Demystifying the popular myth that individuals are dominated by either their right or left brain hemisphere Have you heard of theories suggesting that one of our two hemispheres controls us? Well, @akiripromise has written an excellent post trying to debunk this one. Check it out!

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Saturday

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### Why You Shouldn’t Eat Pork? A well-written post by @chloroform discusses the dangers of pork meat. If you are concerned about your health and what things go into your stomach, then you shouldn’t miss reading this one!

### Saving the globe from warming; Generating solar electricity from bacteria might be an option. An interesting theory in an equally interesting post by @steepup suggests producing electricity using… bacteria! For more information, read @steepup’s great post!

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Sunday

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### District Six And What’s Left Of It- The Epicentre Of Apartheid In South Africa. An amazing history post is here by @highonthehog! Read on to learn more about the Apartheid and what District Six meant for it.

### Insight #10: Introduction to scientific understanding of intelligence Let’s close with some psychology, shall we? Do you remember @saunter? We have an amazing post on intelligence from him that you shouldn’t miss!

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A few words about the nomination process

---

For some time, the editorial team behind this distilled series is made of a one-woman-team, @ruth-girl, and she chooses her favorite posts (potentially discussing with other curators and/or the management). Posts written by the SteemSTEM team are excluded from the nomination process.

Please do not be discouraged if you did not make it on this issue. We are picking up in total 14 posts a week out of more than 200. The chances are thus low ;) In the meantime, you may wish to check these guidelines for extra tips on how your writing could be more effective.

---

Authors upvoted by the SteemSTEM team

---

In the spirit of being transparent about our actions that are now supported by @utopian-io, @curie, our delegators, our trailers and our manual curator supporters, we release every week the list of authors who have caught the attention of the @steemstem curation team.

From July 1 to July 8, we rewarded 124 different authors who have written a total of 160 different articles (there was a Steem blockchain failure during that week). The 121 authors who received votes from @steemstem, @utopian-io and @curie all together that week are:

@abdulmath, @abigail-dantes, @agmoore, @ajpacheco1610, @akiripromise, @alexander.alexis, @alphajeez, @anyes2013, @arac, @ari16, @astrophoto.kevin, @conficker, @cryptoitaly, @dandymee, @davinci.times, @dber, @deathbatter, @dedicatedguy, @delpilar, @derbesserwisser, @drifter1, @dysfunctional, @egotheist, @eliaschess333, @elvigia, @emiliomoron, @emperorhassy, @eniolw, @eurogee, @felixrodriguez, @fran.frey, @ftxft, @funmiakinpelu, @geadriana, @giftessiet, @henrychidiebere, @humbledeen, @ikchris, @infinitelearning, @insight-out, @iptrucs, @iradyjr, @irelandscape, @issavets, @jesusjacr, @joelagbo, @joseangelvs, @josedelacruz, @kingabesh, @knfitaly, @lordneroo, @lorenzor, @luiscd8a, @lupafilotaxia, @mactro, @masterwriter, @maurelvys, @mayrie28, @migueldavidor, @mike961, @mountainwashere, @muphy, @nakary, @nicomax, @noble-noah, @nonzerosum, @oluwoleolaide, @osariemen, @osmy07, @pacheco05, @pagliozzo, @phage93, @pheelz, @procrastilearner, @psicoluigi, @purelyscience, @qiyi, @quekery, @rcebike, @rharphelle, @romualdd, @rubies, @samminator, @sebbbl, @serialfiller, @snackaholic, @sonius94, @soofluffy, @spaghettiscience, @star-vc, @steempsych, @steepup, @suzanrs, @teekingtv, @terrylovejoy, @tomastonyperez, @trumpman, @vanillah, @vidaparasita, @vjap55, @vladimir-simovic, @writeit, @ydavgonzalez, @youssef.sed, @zest, @zoricatech

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_{[Credits: @hightouch]}

All curation rewards earned will be used to fund @steemstem project functioning and activities.

See you all next Thursday or Friday!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM Distilled #66

As you probably already know, SteemSTEM and Utopian.io are organizing a joint meetup in 2 months from now, in Florence and Pisa in Italy.

One of the main events at this meetup will be a group visit to Virgo Labs. To give you some insight into what that actually is, today’s post includes a short explanation about gravitational waves and why Virgo was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics.

Attendance, @fundition campaign and some statistics

So far, 29 people RSVPed and purchased their flight tickets. Where are they coming from? Mostly Europe, but also a decent number of people are coming from Asia and South America. As some of our members in Asia and Africa have yet to secure visas for the trip, they are not yet included in the statistics.

Moreover, the spread in age is also interesting, with our participant birth-years ranging from 1977 to 2000, with a peak in 1990-1995.

It is not as crazy as the spread of ages at the last SteemSTEM meetup - (our oldest participant was 76 and our youngest one was 18). Since registration is still open, we’re hoping for surprises.

Gravitational waves and Virgo in a nutshell

Gravitational waves are small ripples distorting spacetime and are generated by ‘catastrophic’ events in the universe. By catastrophic, one actually means huge events like the merging of two black holes or two neutron stars. Such an event requires a huge mass of matter that can only be found in these cosmic monsters present in our universe.

Even though these events are colossal in magnitude, we can only try to measure modifications of space in units of 0.0000000000000000001 meters.

_{[image credits: LIGO]}

Thanks to lasers and interferometry, such tiny changes have been measured at three places on Earth: the two LIGO observatories in the US and the Virgo observatory in Italy. This international experiment yielded the scientists a Nobel Prize in physics in 2017.

Gastrophysics, or the astrophysics behind gravitational waves, in considered innovative state-of-the-art science, and is thus a good reason to organize a crazy meetup of some of the top tech and science brains from this blockchain at one of the places this inspiring research takes place.

Why pick the one in Italy? Various reasons including, but not limited to, the ease of travel for most participants from around the world.

Want to know more about gravitational waves? Our own @lemouth will be happy to answer all your questions in the comments to this post.

Help us get there!

Moving all these people from their home to Italy takes a lot of funding, with some flights from distant locations costing up to 1000 USD. We would like to help our community afford this and this is where YOU come in.

This initiative, in collaboration with fundition, is aimed to help do just that - collect additional funding for the meetup attendees. Every upvote counts and every donation makes a difference.

At the time of writing, we have collected 1243 upvotes on our crowdfunding post, as well as four direct donations from @jakipatryk, @mahdiyari, @electronicsworld and @roj.

Thanks to everyone, we have collected about 25 SBD in donation, and about 285 SBD in upvotes (which can vary until the post is paid out). We are, however, still far from our goal, and more help is needed to fund flights, accommodations and car rentals.

Obviously, this will not go unthanked! As previously announced, you will be able to join our meetup virtually through livestreams, scheduled chats and whatever else we can organize for YOU with the funds we’ll have collected.

Share the message!

Resteem this post, share it on social media and send it to your friends. SteemSTEM and Utopian.io are coming to Italy and you can take part!

This page is synchronized from the post: SteemSTEM & Utopian.io Meetup in Italy - Updates from our @fundition campaign and more!