This is the Jasper Project. Over 325,000 photovoltaic panels capable of producing 180,000 MWh of clean energy every year and support the needs of almost 80,000 households. More and more solar farms are being built across Africa. Solar energy is on the rise.
Continue reading Sunrise over an African Power Revolution
Four states of matter can be seen in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and – somewhat more exotically – plasma. As a tightly bound combination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, a water molecule is nothing out of the ordinary. Liquid water, steam or ice are still just water. Yet, it is intriguing to see how the very same building blocks of matter are capable of producing such broadly distinct states.
Continue reading Changing States – Fundamental Phases of Matter
This mesmerising image of the Northern Lights over Scotland was captured by Baltimore-born NASA astronaut Terry Virts, a member of Expedition 42 from the International Space Station earlier this week, as it drifted over Europe.
Continue reading Northern Lights over Scotland
Tin – an important element for the electronics industry. Tin is in high demand to manufacture devices like smartphones and tablets. In Indonesia and elsewhere, people work in mines to dig tin ore out of the ground. A dangerous job is made even more unsafe where the mine is being run illegally. And it is not just the adults who take risks. Children in Indonesia are working in brutal conditions to collect the materials used in our cool gadgets. The manufacturers are complicit. Do you really feel like buying that brand new mobile phone now?
Continue reading Little Tin Soldiers of Indonesia
We all know about diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Well, as much as any of us can learn from watching the news whether on TV or on the Web. On average, the advice is loud and clear. You’re told to: eat healthily, exercise moderately. Additionally, don’t smoke, don’t take drugs and go easy on your alcohol consumption. Overall, it makes good sense. Your heart, your lungs and your liver play a major role in keeping you alive and well. That little, everybody realises. But how much do we really know when it comes to illnesses of the nervous system? And without a healthy nervous system, well… This article deals with Multiple Sclerosis. It is an attempt to fill a gap in my own general ignorance and to inform others about this cruel condition…
Continue reading We Need to Talk about Multiple Sclerosis…
It’s not often you can see lightning above Glasgow, so this 2006 Flickr photograph is a rare and impressive sight. But that’s not the point… A study by researchers in the United Kingdom shows it is not just conditions here on Earth that determine how much thunder and lightning we get. The Sun’s magnetic field also has a major influence, more than doubling the number of lightning bolts on some days…
Continue reading Lightning and the Sun’s Magnetic Field
The Leviathan is a large natural gas field located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Together with the nearby Tamar gas field, the Leviathan has been seen as an opportunity for Israel to become a major energy power in the Middle East. This is the Leviathan – a giant gas field with the titanic potential to change Israel’s foreign relations towards a closer collaboration with Turkey and Egypt. Good news in an uncertain energy security climate…
Continue reading Leviathan: The Energy Giant that Sleeps under the Mediterranean
It seems quiet at first, and even dull. Not much happening… Dreich, as one might say! Sad. Grim. Bleak. Not much to do… Not much to see here… Just sheep… But wait!! Look closer! Is that Dolly in this field? Now, that’s interesting! Oh, Aye, we’re in Scotland! It changes EVERYTHING…
Continue reading Scotland’s Quiet Revolutions – One Nation with Sovereign Achievements… and a Pure Dead Brilliant Future!
The human nervous system contains roughly 100 billion nerve cells. Worth pausing for an instant… and read it again. That’s right, 100 billions! To give an idea of the scale, the Milky Way, our own galaxy, contains roughly 100 billion stars. And although human beings are way smaller than galaxies, we begin to appreciate how each one of us is as complex, as mysterious, and as magnificent in its own right, as any large astronomical entity in the physical Universe.
Continue reading We Glimpse at the Body Electric – An Introduction to the Physics of the Human Nervous System
Geckos are amazing creatures. They scamper up walls, scuttle along ceilings and hang upside down on polished glass surfaces. However, the secret of their amazing climbing ability remained a mystery until relatively recently. The secret lies in weak intermolecular forces, described by Van der Waals in 1873.
On 12 June at Arena Corinthians in São Paulo, shortly before 5pm local time, a young paraplegic Brazilian youth will stand up from a wheelchair… walk over to midfield… and take a kick in the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil!
Continue reading Rise of the Exoskeletons – Get Up… and Kick-Off!
Ten years ago, the discovery of the wonder material – Graphene – was announced. Graphene is thin, stronger than steel, flexible, non-metallic, yet electrically conductive. For all these reasons, graphene promises to transform electronics, as well as other technologies. Because of its potential in industry, researchers have been looking for ways to make defect-free graphene in large amounts.
Continue reading Graphite to Graphene… in a Kitchen Blender
A crisp and perfectly flat white plain lies like freshly fallen snow, 100 kilometres (60 miles) across and 3,600 metres (12,000 ft) up in the remote Bolivian Andes. This hauntingly beautiful place, Salar de Uyuni, could be part of the key to tackling climate change, helping to wean the World away from its love of fossil fuels.
Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry is a technique for separating ions of different masses by measuring the time taken to traverse a fixed distance through a magnetic field. Sounds a bit arcane? The technique is used daily by forensic investigative teams to research criminal profiling and provide reliable evidence for the prosecution…
Mysterious flashes of light and clear-sky lightning, blue flames? Glowing orbs and fireballs? Will-o’-the-wisps? Stand-alone rainbow clouds and light pillars? How could this be…?
Continue reading The Enduring Mystery of Earthquake Lights – What Makes a Miracle?
Break a magnet into two pieces, and what do you obtain? What you get, unsurprisingly perhaps, are two new magnets – each one with two sides of opposite polarity. You don’t get a north half and a south half. Back to square one, it seems…
A world wide web for robots to learn from each other and share information is being unveiled for the first time. The eventual aim of the system is that both robots and humans will be able to upload information to the cloud-based database, which would act as a kind of common brain for machines.
And what does the Law of Conservation of Energy actually mean? In science and Nature, the word ‘energy’ conjures up a wealth of images associated with speed of movement, activity and work. Energy does appear in many guises. Even matter is a form of energy. Actually, everything in the Universe is nothing more than energy in one form or another…
In 1909, physics pioneers Robert Millikan (1868-1953) and Harvey Fletcher (1884-1981) performed an experiment that would ultimately enable them to determine one of the most fundamental of all physical constants: the elementary electric charge, i.e. the electric charge of an individual electron – the constant e.
According to the current understanding of Physics, there is as yet no uniform field theory. No all-encompassing well-rounded theory that would enable all the known fundamental forces and elementary particles to fit neatly into one simple model, and to be expressed in terms of a single field.
Continue reading Strings + A Capella = “Bohemian Gravity”?
Seeing the World in glorious colours is central to our lives. Colours shape the way we behave. They affect our mood and our perception. They can influence the way we interact and respond to social and environmental stimuli, whether we are directly aware of it, or through subliminal awareness of our external world. Again, it is one of those things that most people take for granted in everyday life.
Continue reading Colour Perception and Retinal Neurons – Attempting to Map the Human BrainOver 50,000 deaths each year in the UK are attributed to air pollution. Physicist, entrepreneur and father Mark Richards is concerned about the environment and in particular the air pollution that we expose our children to. He has developed a handy machine which can monitor air quality. He wants people to see how bad air pollution is, so that we all think more carefully about our lifestyles and travel methods.
Near-tropical thunderous rain downpours have succeeded the balmy high temperatures that summer has brought to Glasgow of late. Deep black skies. Thunderbolts. Lightning. (♫ Very, very frightening! Galileo Galileo… ♫) Unusual conditions even for a very wet Scotland.
IBM researchers currently hold the Guinness World Record for the ‘World Smallest Stop-Motion Film’ after creating a short film about a boy and his ball, by manipulating single atoms.
The Open University has teamed up with “geek chic” comedian David Mitchell to release a series of 12 short animated YouTube videos about the Physics of the Cosmos: “60-Second Adventures in Astronomy”. A real treat. And it’s educational! If you have only 60 seconds, you can now learn everything we know about matter, energy, life, the Universe and everything…
Continue reading 60-Second Hilarious Adventures in Astronomy
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