Category Archives: Gravity

The World Outside My Window… What a Window!!

What a World!!

Amazing timelapse footage of the Earth (including aurorae, lightning and city lights) as seen from the International Space Station.  Just mesmerizing…

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All Alone in the Night…

Late O’ Clock at Night

It’s late o’clock at night. All alone in the night? Enjoy this amazing time footage flyover of the Earth from the International Space Station. Absolutely uplifting… Positively enthralling…

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Coffee’s Up!

A photograph showing Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, sporting her Starfleet uniform on board the International Space Station.
#BlueDot

Expedition 43 astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti snapped this photograph of herself wearing the Starfleet uniform from TV series “Star Trek: Voyager” aboard the International Space Station, and posted it on her Twitter account @AstroSamantha last month.

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The Sound of Physics

A photograph featuring an electric guitar player and the music score of the Higgs "sonification" by the rock band, Traq.
LOUD!!!

Should you ever have wondered what the Higgs boson sounds like…  It’s…  “AS LOUD AS A RIFF BY JOE SATRIANI.  WHAT?!  IT’S AS LOUD… AS A…”  Oh, wait!!  Here it is.

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Geothermics and Gravity – The IRENA Global Atlas for Renewable Energy

A satellite colour map taken from the IRENA Global Atlas for Renewable Energy - Free Air Anomaly Map.
Eye on the Energy Sources of the Future

Geothermal energy prospectors have long used gravity meters in their search for the right subsurface characteristics.  But these have been point measurements.  GOCE now provides this information across the World at a resolution never before achieved on that scale. 

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That Mysterious Missing Matter – Cocktail Party Physics

A 3D animation showing dark matter creation and the large scale structure of the Universe.
Dark Matter

“Dark matter?”  You cannot see it.  But there is something there.  As for what it is, it’s anybody’s guess!  Dark matter does not interact with light.  At all.  Which makes it difficult to detect.  But if you cannot see it?  How do you know it is in fact there?”  Well, it does interact with gravity, and as it does so it bends the path of any light ray passing nearby...

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The Basics of the Higgs Boson Explained

A slide from the TED lecture on the Basics of the Higgs Boson featuring particle physicists Dave Barney and Steve Goldfarb in the guise of a pink slug...
Two Guys Walk Into a Bar…

That’s how this TED video on the Higgs boson begins.  I say two guys…  It’s more like one physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN – the European laboratory for Particle Physics – aka Dave Barney, and a Blues singer, aka Steve Goldfarb, in the guise of a pink slug…

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400 – Anatomy of a Solar Eclipse

A photograph of the total eclipse seen from Tokyo in 2012, featuring the Sun's corona and the famous "diamond ring".
Orbiting Spheres

Right on cue, day turned into a sudden eerie twilight as a great swathe of the Earth’s surface quickly plunged into transient darkness.  The magic number is 400.  For many observers, weather conditions were far from ideal.  Clouds obscured the much awaited spectacle of the 2015 eclipse.  Thankfully, alternatives were available to astronomers keen not to miss the big event… 

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Celestial Rendez-Vous – An Equinoctial Total Eclipse of the Sun

A photograph showing the Sun's diamond ring during a total eclipse.

Polar Equinoctial Eclipse 2015

On 20th March 2015, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun and exactly block out most of its light.  It will be the first total solar eclipse of the 21st century that is visible from the northernmost regions of Europe…

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Northern Lights over Scotland

A photograph taken from the International Space Station and showing the northern lights $ ($aurora borealis$ )$ above Scotland.
#BlueDot

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.

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