Once Upon A Long Time Ago…Following World War I and World War II, at least three major powers disposed of massive quantities of captured, damaged and obsolete chemical warfare material by dumping them into oceans, seas and lakes around the globe. Mustard gas, phosgene, lewisite… Submerged chemical ammunitions pose very serious ongoing environmental problems. Continue reading What Lies Beneath – The Toxic Legacy of Post-War Ammunitions Sea Dumping
The Strongest Ever Hurricane23rd October 2015. The ‘strongest ever’ hurricane recorded in the Western hemisphere is about to make a “potentially catastrophic” landfall on the western coast of Mexico. This is hurricane Patricia. At that time, the super storm is a Category 5. Weather scientists predict 20 inches of rain and 200 miles per hour winds… Continue reading On the Trail of Hurricane Patricia
Liquid Water on MarsMars is not the dry, arid planet we once thought it was. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found. NASA’s announcement has the potential of turning some Red Planet theories on their heads…
A new online citizen science initiative, Fossilfinder, is inviting ordinary members of the public to help hunt for fossils in the Kenyan desert. The volunteers will have the opportunity to sift through one million images from the arid Turkana Basin – a key area for fossils of early human ancestors. Continue reading Armchair Fossil Hunting in the Turkana Basin
Green PlanetOnce upon a time, Europe was almost covered by one giant forest. Now, it’s almost entirely fields and grasslands. Humans are controlling tree densities. Understanding the global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. Continue reading Three Trillion Trees
Fossil Fuel Emissions Threatens Carbon Dating AccuracyThe radiocarbon 14C dating method has been used for decades to accurately determine the age of a wide range of artefacts. But our relentless use of fossil fuels has pumped a type of carbon into the atmosphere that is starting to confuse the dating technique. By 2050, scientists warn, new fabrics could have the same radiocarbon date as items 1,000 years old! Continue reading The Future of RadioCarbon Dating – And an Overview of the AMS Technique
Reading Someone’s Mind through their Eyes?Look into my eyes. The eyes, the eyes. Not around the eyes. Don’t look AROUND the eyes. Look INTO my eyes. The eyes… [click] You’re not under! But… Can you read my mind? Continue reading Eyes of the Beholder
Estimating the Time of DeathForensic 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
Light in All its BeautyTaking a radically different experimental approach, EPFL scientists were able to take the first ever snapshot of light behaving simultaneously both as a wave AND as a stream of particles. You need light to take a photograph. But how do you take a photograph of light? Continue reading Seeing the Light Fantastic – Particles, Waves and All
What Does a Second Look Like?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…
A Vernesque Feat of Human EngineeringDeep down, in huge subterranean caverns… Underneath the Franco-Swiss border… 300 feet underground… lies a beast of unprecedented power… and mystery. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that man summons to explore the uncharted corners of the sub-atomic realm… After two years of a deep slumber, the mighty beast has awoken… Continue reading Physics at 13 TeV – Cranking Up the LHC
El Niño: A Temperature AnomalyStill in its early stages, El Niño has the potential to cause extreme and even devastating weather around the World. According to climate graphs, we have reached a 0.6 value for the ENSO. It’s a 60% probability. El Niño is now officially back. Continue reading El Niño – Return of the ‘Enfant Terrible’
Wacky RacesHow could the humble Tortoise ever beat legendary Greek champion, Achilles, in a race to the finish? And what about that time when the champion of the animal kingdom simply ridiculed his next-door neighbour aka the Hare? Continue reading Zeno’s Paradoxes or What Happened When Achilles and the Hare Decided to Outfox the Legendary Tortoise
Salad Growing… in Space?Ever since the early days of human space travel, back in the 1960s, astronauts have run experiments involving plants in space. Over a million seeds of rocket (two kilograms of rocket seeds) are shortly due to take off from Florida, bound for the International Space Station, as part of British ESA astronaut Tim Peake’s six-month Principia mission. Continue reading Space-Age Rocket
Amazing timelapse footage of the Earth (including aurorae, lightning and city lights) as seen from the International Space Station. Just mesmerizing…
Published on YouTube on 3 Dec 2013
Images: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/
Music: ‘Fill My Heart’ by Two Steps from Hell
Editor: David Peterson
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…
Continue reading All Alone in the Night…
The rare Bs0 →µ+µ− decayThe Standard Model of Particle Physics describes the fundamental particles and their interactions via the strong, electromagnetic and weak forces, providing precise predictions for measurable quantities that can be tested experimentally. Here’s the latest!! It’s hot!!! It’s exciting!!! At least, if you’re a particle physicist… Continue reading Rare Beauty Decays at CERN
What Pickpockets Know and Your Brain Would Rather Not Tell YouBe 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. Continue reading The Illusion of Choice – Now You See It, Now You Don’t…
El Ejido, Southern SpainSurrounding 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… Continue reading Food as Geopolitical Subjugation – Welcome to Plastic City, Almería!
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. Continue reading The Sound of Physics
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. Continue reading Sunrise over an African Power Revolution
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... “And did it really kill the dinosaurs…?” Continue reading That Mysterious Missing Matter – Cocktail Party Physics
Twin AstronautsA 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. Continue reading The Real-Life Space Twin Paradox
Orbiting SpheresRight 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… Continue reading 400 – Anatomy of a Solar Eclipse
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… Continue reading Celestial Rendez-Vous – An Equinoctial Total Eclipse of the Sun
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