Category Archives: Physics

Nitrogen – Nature’s Explosive Building Blocks

An animation showing the violent explosion of a nitrogen-filled balloon.
“Lifeless”

One of the all-time most interesting elements in the Periodic Table, nitrogen is a colourless, odourless, inert diatomic gas that makes up to 78% of the Earth’s atmosphere.  We breathe it everyday, although an atmosphere of pure nitrogen is nefarious to animal and human life.  It is vital to life and plants simply strive on it.  Nitrogen compounds are explosive, and nations have gone to war over it.  It can feed… or kill.

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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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Where The Streets Have No Name

A computer-generated drawing based on a photograph from a typical street in Saragossa, in Spain. Image: NaturPhilosophie
Addressing the World

About four billion people on our planet actually live in places with no house numbers,  no street names, or without anything that constitutes a proper address.  They are effectively off-the-map, with no voting rights or access to public utilities.  A new company called What3Words proposes to revolutionize that…

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The Illusion of Choice – Now You See It, Now You Don’t…

A black and white photograph showing passengers standing in an underground railway carriage. The man at the centre of the picture is leaning casually and appears to be reading his newspaper attentively. In fact, he is a pickpocket, who is busy stealing a wallet from the back pocket of one of the passengers on the left who is turning his back to him, and seems unaware that he's being robbed.
What Pickpockets Know and Your Brain Would Rather Not Tell You

Be under no illusion.  You saw the sign: “Pickpockets are operating in this area”.  You reacted.  Instantly.  The first thing you did was to check your pockets or handbag for signs of financial solvability.  All is well.  You relax.  Only now, you’ve become the “mark”… because you’ve just given away precious information about the location of your valuables around your body. 

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Food as Geopolitical Subjugation – Welcome to Plastic City, Almería!

A satellite photograph of El Ejido "Plastic City" in southern Spain, showing the vast expanse of the plastic covered greenhouses near Almeria.
El Ejido, Southern Spain

Surrounding the town of El Ejido, Almeria Province, southern Spain is a sea of greenhouses, stretching for tens of kilometres, visible from space.  Millions of tons of vegetables are exported from there to other European countries and further parts of the World.  Along the Mediterranean coast, tourism flourishes, fuelling a booming real estate economy… 

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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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Sunrise over an African Power Revolution

A photograph showing the solar photovoltaic panels of the Kimberley project in South Africa.

The Rise of Solar Power Farms

This is the Jasper Project.  Over 325,000 photovoltaic panels capable of producing 180,000 MWh of clean energy every year and support the needs of almost 80,000 households.  More and more solar farms are being built across Africa.  Solar energy is on the rise.

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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 Real-Life Space Twin Paradox

A photograph featuring twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly in their NASA uniform.
Twin Astronauts

A ground-breaking one-year space mission involving twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly should help doctors, scientists and mission planners better understand the physical and psychological impacts of a long-duration spaceflight.

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