The Universe is vast – and strangely, half-empty. For decades, cosmologists have wrestled with the “missing baryon problem”, a puzzling deficit of ordinary matter…
Continue reading Mapping the Invisible: How Fast Radio Bursts Illuminate the Universe’s Missing Matter
Once vast and shimmering lakes, some of the World’s greatest inland seas are now vanishing before our eyes. This is not just a story of receding shorelines, but a planetary warning.
Continue reading Stranded Ghost Ships and Disappearing Seas
In the classical world of materials science, metals are well-behaved. Their electrons follow predictable rules, their resistivity scales with temperature in a quadratic fashion, and their behaviour is neatly captured by Fermi liquid theory. But in the quantum realm…
Continue reading Seriously Strange Metals: The Quantum Rebels of Condensed Matter Physics
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
In 1977, humankind sent a machine into the interstellar void to tell the Universe who we were. Now, 48 years later, the void may have answered with a message to Voyager…
Continue reading The Message to Voyager
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
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
The brain is a bio-chemical organ that emanates electromagnetic waves. That little, we do know. And brainwaves are linked to cognitive states from awareness and consciousness, to dream states. But what are their particularities? And are brain waves modulated by external frequencies?
Continue reading Neural Oscillations – Are You Having a Brain Wave?
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
The Hessdalen Valley of Norway. Just 15 kilometres across. Low population density. But why is there a blue box perched high up on the hillside, with cameras covering the valley? What’s going on in this secluded valley?!
Continue reading Identifying the Unidentified – The Hessdalen Light Phenomenon, Norway
North east of Ukraine, close to the Russian border, is the site of the Duga radar, also known during the 70s and 80s as the Woodpecker – one of the most extraordinary engineering structures ever built.
Continue reading The Brief Flight of the Russian Woodpecker Over The Horizon – And More About Phased Array Radars…
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?Human blood is quite remarkable. It transports oxygen, hormones and nutrients. It tracks down and kills pathogens, carries away waste products, helps regulate body temperature, and it irrigates all our internal organs. And the blood is packed with information.
Continue reading Within The Blood
A clock is ticking inside a mountain in Western Texas. It is a monumental clock. Hundreds of feet tall, its mechanism is designed to tick for 10,000 years. It’s a real clock. The first of several millennial clocks being built around the World, to endure for centuries. Tick…
Continue reading 10,000 Years Later…
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
The very latest technology in scanning and 3D printing is now providing vital clues and evidence in murder. And as it happened, scientists can now ascertain that World famous flightless extinct bird… the Dodo… died… AFTER BEING SHOT… in the back of the head…
Continue reading Digital Forensics and The Case of the Dead Dodo
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
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…
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