Personal Interests

This particular picture is rather special though, because he drew the first draft for it while in space using coloured pencils he took with him:

As I pulled myself back toward the airlock, I heard Pasha talking to me: “It’s time to come back in.” I realized I had been floating free in space for over 10 minutes. In that moment my mind flickered back for a second to my childhood, to my mother opening the window at home and calling to me as I played outside with my friends, “Lyosha, it’s time to come inside now.”

-having a job

-not having a job

-applying for jobs

-the job market

And then he left and became a middle school science teacher. And that turned out to be his real calling. He was bright and creative and a little bit brilliant and a genuinely good scientist, and he gave that world up to teach kids and he loved it. Even after everything, after the Petrova Taskforce and Project Hail Mary and Tau Ceti and ultimately ending up on Erid, his calling is to teach kids.

As someone who has dipped in and out of the science communication/science education world myself, it's so important to me that Grace loves teaching, and especially that he loves teaching kids. People really devalue science communication work, and there's often this unspoken assumption that the people doing it just aren't "smart enough" to become real scientists, so they do scicomm instead. And everything about Grace flies in the face of that -- he's perfectly capable of doing the science, but it's not what he loves the most! What he loves and values and finds important is teaching, and I adore that. It's so refreshing to see, and such a genuine love letter to educators, and to everyone who chooses to prioritize communication and education regardless of how specialized they may or may not be in their field.

is to be a teacher. And

that’s so important.

The find was made by local hobby archaeologist and licensed metal detectorist Constantin Fried on a field near Petershagen and turned over to the appropriate governing body, the LWL-Archäologie für Westfalen, in 2023. Since then, it has been subjected to a variety of analysis methods. We now know that it worked, that the internal mechanism is made of iron, and that it probably dates to the 3rd or 4th century BC. Here, have some cool pictures:

Yes, that is how it was found. Come to Germany and bother a farmer enough that he lets you walk over his field, and you too could find 1,600 year old gold artefacts! (Don't actually do this, the farmers will get mad at you and the archaeologists don't like it either. You need a license for metal detectoring in many German states and fieldwalking with the intent to find and keep archaeological material as a private person is illegal, yes, literally.)

This is the large-scale brass reproduction made by one of the restorers at LWL-Archäologie. Since the original was found with a single gold link, it was possible to reconstruct the chain that would have held the lock to whatever it was supposed to hold closed (probably a small box, maybe a jewellery box). In order to work, the chain would have needed a minimum of six links. Also not found but added to the reconstruction: The key.

There's still a lot of unsolved questions around this find: Where is it from? Was it actually used as a lock, or did its owner wear it as a piece of curious jewellery? The lock seems to have been forced at least once, was this because someone stole the contents of the box it was locking, or was something stuck in the mechanism and the owner couldn't get at their stuff? And maybe most interesting of all: How was it made? Because, as far as we know, the Romans did not have magnifiying glasses, and this thing is TINY!!! It's TINY!!!!

Sources (apart from the article link I'm reblogging):

Tagesschau, Archäologische Sensation. Goldenes Minischloss aus der Römerzeit gefunden (article uploaded Jan 28, 2025).