Following World War I and World War II, at least three major powers disposed of massive quantities of captured, damaged and obsolete chemical warfare material by dumping them into oceans, seas and lakes around the globe. Mustard gas, phosgene, lewisite… Submerged chemical ammunitions pose very serious ongoing environmental problems.
Continue reading What Lies Beneath – The Toxic Legacy of Post-War Ammunitions Sea Dumping
23rd October 2015. The ‘strongest ever’ hurricane recorded in the Western hemisphere is about to make a “potentially catastrophic” landfall on the western coast of Mexico. This is hurricane Patricia. At that time, the super storm is a Category 5. Weather scientists predict 20 inches of rain and 200 miles per hour winds…
Continue reading On the Trail of Hurricane Patricia
Mars is not the dry, arid planet we once thought it was. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found. NASA’s announcement has the potential of turning some Red Planet theories on their heads…
Continue reading Mars Has Water!
A new online citizen science initiative, Fossilfinder, is inviting ordinary members of the public to help hunt for fossils in the Kenyan desert. The volunteers will have the opportunity to sift through one million images from the arid Turkana Basin – a key area for fossils of early human ancestors.
Continue reading Armchair Fossil Hunting in the Turkana Basin
Once upon a time, Europe was almost covered by one giant forest. Now, it’s almost entirely fields and grasslands. Humans are controlling tree densities. Understanding the global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere.
Continue reading Three Trillion Trees
I met Cortana mid-afternoon. The perfect time for a well-earned tea break and a chat down at the local café. I was keen to meet Cortana for the first time. By then, she was already a celebrity.
Continue reading All the Trappings of Artificial Intelligence – Does Cortana Dream of Electric Sheep?
The radiocarbon 14C dating method has been used for decades to accurately determine the age of a wide range of artefacts. But our relentless use of fossil fuels has pumped a type of carbon into the atmosphere that is starting to confuse the dating technique. By 2050, scientists warn, new fabrics could have the same radiocarbon date as items 1,000 years old!
Waste fibres from cannabis crops can be transformed into high-performance low-cost pseudo-graphene energy storage devices.
Continue reading From Super Weed to Super-Capacitors, Another Surprising Use for Cannabis…Let’s talk about size… 😉 How big are the objects floating in our Universe and how big can they get? Starting with a “big” object, our very own Moon… Embark on a tour of space… A tour of our Universe…
Continue reading Size Matters… in Astrophysical Terms
Forensic researchers from the University of Salzburg have developed a new method for establishing an exact time of death after as long as 10 days – a significant step forward from the current method of measuring core body temperature, which only works up to 36 hours after death.
Continue reading We Check the Time of Death with Post-Mortem Degradation of Skeletal Proteins – And Other Gruesome Forensic Facts of Life