Our Earth is constantly bombarded with high energy particles and cosmic rays. These charged particles interact with the atoms in atmospheric gases, producing a cascade of secondary particles. And you can use those for dating rocks!
Continue reading Dating Rocks – Methods of Historical Surface Exposure Analysis
According to whom you ask, Zero Point Energy can do everything… or nothing at all. But what is it? Something that pervades all of space, albeit on a microscale? The kinetic energy a molecule does retain, even when cooled down to absolute zero? And could it offer us a source of unlimited energy?
Continue reading Zero Point Energy and The Vacuum of Space
Wuwei City, Gansu, China. On the edge of the Gobi desert, the production of safe, inexpensive nuclear energy is soon to be underway. The technology will not use uranium, and it will not require water for its cooling process.
Continue reading Building the Energy Future with Thorium in the Gobi Desert, China
A Norwegian valley. Strange lights observed by many witnesses. It has been called “Norway’s Roswell”. But what makes the remote valley of Hessdalen so different from other locations?
Continue reading Eliminating the Impossible – The Complex Electro-Chemistry Behind the Hessdalen Lights
Over the next century, large magnitude volcano eruptions are many times more likely to happen than all risk of large asteroid or comet impacts combined. The World is not prepared.
Continue reading Volcanic Unrest and How To Survive It
Greifswald, Northeastern Germany, 2016. Physicists at the Max Planck Institute have been racing to find a way of producing sustainable, clean energy with a stable nuclear fusion reactor. The challenge? Re-creating the Sun’s powerhouse on a much, much smaller scale.
Continue reading Engineering A Star – Nuclear Fusion, Tokamaks and Stellarators
As World leaders meet for COP26 in Glasgow, the Earth has already reached 1.2 °C warming above pre-1880s industrial levels.
Continue reading Our Burning Planet – Beyond Net Zero, Will We Adapt Or Die?
A 42-year-old converted oil exploration ship, JOIDES Resolution is one of the few drilling vessels available to earth scientists for the geological study of the seabed at ocean depths below 8,000 metres. Its ultimate aim is to become better acquainted with what goes on beneath the Earth’s crust.
Continue reading Looking Into The Abyss – The JOIDES Resolution Progress Update
This 2.5-tonne lump of rock is a banded iron formation. It marks a turning point in the history of life on our beautiful planet. A crucial chemical transition. When oxygen started becoming abundant. And life took its next step towards complexity…
Continue reading Rock of Ages – Why Banded Iron Formations Are Far From Boring…
It’s unclear why so many great whales beach en masse around the World. And it’s really difficult to estimate their number, especially when the cetacean strandings occur along remote shores. But there is hope. Scientists are now developing techniques to monitor marine populations from space.
Continue reading Saving Hope… – Cetacean Strandings and Satellites
A hypothetical Ninth planet has been lurking on the outskirts of our Solar System. But Planet Nine may not be a planet at all…
Continue reading Nine – The Elusive Planet in Our Solar System
Canada. A land of unspoiled wilderness and natural beauty, led by the poster boy of progressive politics Justin Trudeau who has cast himself as an environmental champion. Canada as the World sees it…
Continue reading Trudeau’s Canada: From Climate Champion to Environmental Pariah?
Come in. Step into the pristine environment of a modern science laboratory. With all its cutting-edge equipment neatly arranged and organised work spaces clearly delineated, you might just be forgiven for thinking it is a model of sustainability but… Look a bit closer! You might be surprised…
Continue reading Sash, Chillers and Power Hungry Accelerators – The Embarrassing Truth about Modern Science Laboratories
Pesticides have a dramatic impact on the health of ecosystems, posing real risks to pollinating insects, such as bees. But did you know that your favourite bouquet may be posing a risk to your own well-being?
For a while now, astrophysicists have known that our Universe is expanding, and accelerating. And much like the surface of a rubber balloon getting inflated, space is getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger…
Continue reading The Universe Expands Far Faster Than Anticipated…
Five years after the Chelyabinsk asteroid impact, a three-in-a-century event happens again over the Bering Sea. And almost no-one notices. I say “no-one”… but the Earth is a planet under constant scrutiny.
Continue reading Large Asteroid Impacts Earth…
Until now, you might have been forgiven for thinking that singing mice were merely the product of Disney’s prolific imagination. Not anymore! Although it wasn’t classically trained by a modern P.T. Barnum, the singing mouse is a reality.
Continue reading The Strange Operetta of the Singing Mouse
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the systematic and artful manipulation of the organised mores and moods of the average population is essential to maintaining democracy. With well-rehearsed strategies, that is how the decision-making elite maintains its hold on power over the majority of us. For you see, it’s like this…
Continue reading Artful Manipulations and Corporate Deceptions – When The Cracks Begin To Show…
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster left behind a highly toxic landscape. Thirty-two years hence, the area around the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat largely reverted to forest. Despite the contamination, wildlife gradually took over. Hints of recovery emerged as animal species began to thrive, free from the disruptive influence of human activity. And for the first time, researchers recorded evidence of a young wolf boldly venturing away from the danger zone.
Continue reading Where the Chernobyl Wolf Roams…
Viewing tiny objects, like cells, under a microscope is a real game of hide-and-seek with the light. It follows that the specimen must be carefully prepared, or ‘mounted’ on a slide. Here we get a little closer to the eukaryotic cell. The building block of life itself…
Continue reading Life Under The Microscope
The Scottish coast is renowned for the wealth of its rocky features. And if you can’t abide Geology, you can while away the hours with the local marine biology. It’s dead quiet and if you’re lucky on a clear day, you might even see Arran magically emerge from the mist across the waters of the Clyde estuary.
Continue reading A Day Trip to the Ayrshire Coast of Scotland
Our environment is permeated by radiation, present around us at all time. We are constantly exposed to radioactivity from natural sources for the most part naturally occurring radioactive nuclei in rocks and cosmic rays – the ‘background’. Without ado, this is my lowdown on radioactivity.
Continue reading Radioactivity and the Background of Dancing Particles
Mercury is rising. And in many more ways than one. As global temperatures go up, the Arctic ice is melting. Sea level rises. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. But below the permafrost, another threat is lurking.
No need to be an atomic scientist, when you’re considering the state of the World today, to understand the picture is an alarming one. Allegorically-speaking, the Earth is now only two minutes away from impending catastrophe.
Continue reading Closer to Midnight… – The Countdown to Doomsday Earth
At the heart of central London, opposite St Pancras’ International station, stands the new Francis Crick Institute – a working building with distinctive ultra-modern architecture. Important science is being done here. Life-changing science.
Continue reading The Francis Crick Institute – Open For Boundless Scientific Discovery
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