Incident at Lisbon Electricity Museum in Portugal as EU Event derails

What you get when you let Belgians play with black holes

Officials from DG Research must be pondering at what seemed like a really good idea and ended up in total chaos, namely the organisation of  the EUCYS – European Union Contest for Young Scientists – which is described as “an initiative created by the European Commission in 1989 with a goal of promoting the science interchange between young scientists and guiding them to a future in science and technology” and is in its 22nd Edition.

Let’s set the scene: a bunch of young inventors aged 15 to 22 from all over Europe, the USA, South Korea, etc, gather with their creations in an Electricity Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. One can only applaud the impetus the European Commission is giving to innovation and creation by the future generation, and consider such an event with a positive mind frame. Where all went wrong however is when the participants were invited to set up their stands displaying their projects and inventions today, in preparation of the official opening of the event on 24 September.

The result, as reported by unofficial sources to the BJ reporters:

• A chimpanzee was seen riding a humpback whale briefly, after escaping through a back door. The Portuguese population has been asked to assist in his capture through regular radio and TV messages. The chimp seems to respond to the name “José” and can be approached easily by waving chocolate bars at him.
• The Belgian project on black holes made its point…leaving a huge gap in the middle of the city and making some of the witnesses comment that “quite frankly, whose bright idea was it to let Belgians tinker with black holes knowing how good they are at messing things up?”.
• 100 Flat packed christmas trees decided to open up at once, making the Museum suddenly crowed by shining half trees with mirrors and creating an electricity consumption surge that left half of Lisbon camping with no power for two hours.

Whilst organiser refused to talk to the BJ reporters, we were told that the whole series of incidents will not jeopardise the official launch of the event on Friday evening. The young people present were actually quite enthusiastic, one of them stating that “Whoever thought we were a bunch of dull geeks doing nerdy stuff is certainly proven wrong now”.