Engineers have designed a continuous chemical process that produces useful crude oil in under an hour. All from a verdant green algae paste with the consistency of pea soup…
Manmade Carbon CO2 Pollution Has Already Put Us on Track for 20 Metres of Sea Level Rise
The bad news is that we’re all but certain to end up with a coastline at least this flooded: 20 metres or 69 feet. The “good” news is that this might take 1000 to 2000 years (or longer/shorter), and the choices we make now can affect the rate of rise and whether we blow past 69 feet to beyond 200 feet.
The Sun ought be awash with activity right now. But space scientists are baffled… The Sun has reached its solar maximum: the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at a peak. Yet it has hit a lull. And to see when the Sun was this inactive last… you’ve got to go back about 100 years…
January 20, 2014. 500 million miles from Earth. 09:59:58… 09:59:59… 10:00:00 GMT. After spending two and a half years into deep-space hibernation, Rosetta awakes…
Commander Chris Hadfield ascended to international stardom when he released his cover version of David Bowie’s 1972 Song ‘Space Oddity’ from the International Space Station.
An Essential Molecule for the Sustainability of Life
Water. H2O. The chemical formula is simple. Two atoms of hydrogen H and one atom of oxygen O, held together by covalent bonds, are all it takes to make what is perhaps the most fundamental substance to life on Earth.
Olivine is a common green mineral, present in the Earth’s subsurface. The mineral is also called ‘peridot’ and ‘chrysolite’ when mined as a semi-precious stone.
Just when you had high hopes of getting your hands on the latest gizmos and trendy gadgets in time for Christmas… and Boom! You’re being given a comet! Not just any comet. Comet ISON (C/2012 S1). It’s 4.6 billion years old! And it will pass within 40,000,000 miles of Earth.
Typhoon Haiyan was a huge weather system. If you haven’t heard about the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines by now, then you probably don’t care…
Just nine months ago, a massive asteroid blew up above the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The explosion created by the Chelyabinsk asteroid on Friday 15 February 2013 was thelargest explosion on Earth since the one that occurred over the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908.
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…
Back in May 2013, scientists announced that they had managed to capture a photo of an electron’s whizzing orbit within a hydrogen atom, using a unique new technology of ‘quantum’ microscopy. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s take a short trip into the infinitesimally small! Here is the first photograph of a hydrogen atom!
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.
The Physics Nobel Prize was awarded on 8 October 2013 to Edinburgh University-based scientist Peter Higgs for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism crucial to our understanding of the origin of everything…
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.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released its latest summary of the science behind human-caused climate change or, to use its catchy official title, the IPCC Working Group 1 Fifth Assessment Report Summary for Policy Makers – Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis.
The Leidenfrost effect is a phenomenon in which a liquid, brought in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than the liquid’s own boiling point, produces a thin vapour layer. This insulating vapour layer keeps liquid from boiling rapidly.
Any signal that may be represented as an amplitude varying over time has a corresponding frequency spectrum. This applies to concepts (and natural phenomena) that most human beings encounter daily, without giving them a second thought. Such as visible light (and colour perception), radio/TV channels, wireless communications… Even the regular rotation of the Earth. Even the sound of music…
Over 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.
Scientists are currently exploring the concept of vacuum instability. What does this mean? Well, they believe there is a chance that… Billions of years from now, a new universe could open up into the present one and replace it. It all depends on some very precise numbers related to the Higgs boson particle that researchers are currently trying to pin down.
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.
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