For billions of years, the Earth has remained relatively stable within our solar system. However, astrophysical simulations do suggest that this tranquility may not last forever.
Continue reading Passing Field Stars and The Three-Body Problem
At some point, we’ve all heard about time dilation – every sci-fi fan among us in particular. And yet, moving clocks DO slow down. This is not a fiction fantasy. It’s a little thing called Special Relativity.
Continue reading Why Moving Clocks Do Slow Down
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
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
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…
If so, are you a man?? Mmmh… yes… The Male Idiot Theory: it’s not new but I thought I’d mention it in passing… Ladies, enjoy…
Continue reading The Male Idiot Theory – Sex Differences in Risky Behaviour
On 19 June 2018, a peculiar number emerged from the blockchain space. The series of numbers and letters sent the cryptosphere into overdrive, sparking rampant talk of quantum computing breakthroughs, time travel, Satoshi’s return, and the esoteric meaning of Bitcoin.
Continue reading Time Travel or Quantum Leap – Where Does Bitcoin Meet Relativity?
On the whole, Earth scientists agree that melting of land ice greatly contributes to sea-level rise. And one thing’s for sure. Future global warming will exacerbate the risks posed to human civilisation. But… What if you could forecast major floods? You can.
CERN’s LHCb collaboration has announced the discovery of a new “charming” particle, thought to be instrumental to the strong force – the Xi-cc++. Another particle. So…?
Continue reading Charming New Particle Xi-cc++ Discovered at CERN
The Sentinel satellite program was designed to replace the older Earth observation missions, which have reached retirement or are nearing the end of their operational life span. The satellite array will ensure a continuity of data, so that there are no gaps in ongoing studies.
Continue reading Sentinel Is Watching
A meat and potato pie has been attached to a weather balloon, and sent “into space”…
Continue reading Pie in the Sky
It’s cold down there. Icy cold. It’s dark. Pitch black, in fact. And the crushing pressures make the deepest parts of the oceans into some of the most hostile places on our planet.
Continue reading Sailing the Lower Midnight… – The Uncharted Frontier of Modern Deep Sea Exploration
Erm…No. Not Mona Lisa! (Rolls eyes.) Think again!! This is LISA – the Lisa Pathfinder satellite, the key element for a grand new project: a space-based gravitational observatory.
Continue reading Hunting Ripples in the Fabric of Space-Time – The Trials and Tribulations of LISA
There is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms. From an all-physical point of view, the former tend to be so much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. At MIT, Jeremy England derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity.
Continue reading A Theory of Life… The Physics of Cells and Macroscopic Irreversibility
You know how when you throw a rock into a pool, that makes ripples in the water? And how Einstein once upon a time predicted that the very mass of stars and planets should warp spacetime? Although we have had a justified inkling that Einstein was right for quite some time, we had never before detected such a phenomenon. Until THIS happened…
Continue reading The Discovery of Gravitational Waves – Merging Black Holes and Advanced LIGO
After nearly five hours in space, British astronaut Tim Peake completed his first spacewalk, at 17:31 GMT on Friday 15 January. Intended to last over six hours, the space walk was cut short after his US colleague Tim Kopra reported a water leak in his helmet.
Already this article is beginning to sound like one of those sempiternal quizzes you so often get on social media… but it actually shows how science reality connects. Are you having a scientific identity crisis?
Continue reading Lateral Thinking in Science – Who Are You?
With his wind-swept mane, the inimitable Richard Feynman looked devilishly handsome. And he darn-diddly knew it too! As for Fritz Haber, Rosalind Franklin and Neil deGrasse Tyson, they were the original hipsters. That’s according to BuzzFeed anyway…
Yes, modern-day hipsters take heed. BuzzFeed – the undisputed masters of click-bait – even made it a feature in unique BuzzFeed style: 11 Pictures That Prove That Scientists Were The Original Hipsters.
Marie Curie (1867-1934) – the ‘foreign student‘ who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She didn’t shy away from a bold pattern.
Fritz Haber (1868-1934) figured out the method used in industry to synthesise ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. Known as the Haber-Bosch process, the food production for half the World’s current population depends on this method for producing nitrogen fertilisers. So, you wouldn’t dream of taking a dig at his glasses…
Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) may be considered to be the “father of the atomic bomb”, but you wouldn’t think of criticising his tie.
Stylish Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) was unravelling the mysteries of DNA structure, long before anyone even heard of DNA.
And Neil deGrasse Tyson? The only thing hotter than his facial hair are the supernovae he studied in his field of Astrophysics…
If you thought physicists weren’t known for their good dress sense, think again!
Astronomers have found the smallest exoplanet yet to be directly photographed by a telescope on Earth. A methane-shrouded gas giant. A young Jupiter…
Continue reading Exoplanet ‘Young Jupiter’ 51 Eridani bLet’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
1/60 minute. 1/3,600 hour. 1/86,400 day. 1/1 hertz. The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of a 133 55Cs caesium isotope corresponds to one second. But what does it look like? And where might you find a second?
Continue reading Just a Second…
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