I was supposed to go to this BME seminar this afternoon in the ACES building. It was in this small little auditorium that is usually sparsely attended. Each week the room is probably only 1/3 full. Definitely not one of those things where seating is hard to come by. So today, right before the seminar, I was on the phone and was occupied right up until it was time to leave for seminar. I ended up getting there 1-2 minutes late and what I saw really confused me.

When I got to the auditorium there were SO MANY PEOPLE crowding in the room! Not only were all the seats filled, people were sitting in the aisles, standing along the wall, and crowding both entrances into the room. The closest I could get was right outside the door. Standing on my tip-toes I could barely see what was going on, let alone hear anything that was being said. It was pretty amazing, especially just for a research talk. Turns out that the speaker today was Dr. Steven Chu, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics back in 1997. Okay, great I thought. I'd never heard of him, and I'm guessing that most of the people there had never heard of him either. I guess it was the Nobel Prize thing that really attracted people to come. It couldn't have just been his research, could it? Every week the seminar series has someone new come, but the room is never crowded like it was today. Maybe people were just curious about this research "celebrity"? I find the whole idea kinda odd. But maybe that wasn't the case at all.

Anyways, I would have wanted to stay and listen to his talk, but with too many people I ended up just giving up and going back to the lab. A couple of others had to do that too. If only I hadn't had to take that phone call:)