Loading Up the Dice for Extreme ClimateThe impacts of climate change include a higher risk of flooding and changes to crop yields and water availability. No single country causes climate change, and no one country can stop it. We need to match the urgency of our response with the scale of the science. Continue reading Global Weirding: Why The World Must Acclimatise
Space Training in Kölnisch WatersMajor Timothy Peake has been training for space underwater in Germany to prepare for work in zero gravity. The British astronaut who is set to go into space next year said that learning how to live and work in space will be essential to the future survival of our species. Continue reading Meanwhile Major Tim has been Training for Space in Cologne, Germany…
Earthquake Lights in the SkyMysterious flashes of light and clear-sky lightning, blue flames? Glowing orbs and fireballs? Will-o’-the-wisps? Stand-alone rainbow clouds and light pillars? How could this be…?
Scientists in the United States now say that earthquake lightning flashes appearing to precede earthquakes, are likely to be sparked by movements within the ground below. This phenomenon could be used to trigger alarms and help warn millions of an impending danger…
Continue reading The Enduring Mystery of Earthquake Lights – What Makes a Miracle?
A Watchful Eye on the Global ForestA new global monitoring system, Global Forest Watch has been launched that promises “near real-time” information on deforestation around the World. GFW uses information from hundreds of millions of satellite images, as well as data from people on the ground. Despite a greater global awareness of the impacts of deforestation, the scale of forest loss remains significant. Continue reading Global Forest Watch Map Recording Tree Loss in “Real Time”
On the Trail of the Elusive Magnetic MonopoleBreak a magnet into two pieces, and what do you obtain? What you get, unsurprisingly perhaps, are two new magnets – each one with two sides of opposite polarity. You don’t get a north half and a south half. Back to square one, it seems… Continue reading Magnetic “Monopole” Observed in Quantum System – The Lowdown on Electromagnetism
Euler’s IdentityPlease take a moment to enjoy this thing of great beauty… Simple to look at. Yet incredibly profound. Does it get any better than this? Continue reading Euler’s Equation: A Thing of Great Beauty
Unprecedented Weather EventsIf you have had it up to here with floods in England, if you are left cold by the snow in the United States or mystified by the unseasonably mild temperatures in Scandinavia, blame it on Santa Claus! Continue reading Are the Jet Streams Dynamics Santa’s Revenge? No, really.
Evergreen Energy from AlgaeEngineers 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… Continue reading Algae to Bio-Crude Oil in 60 Minutes?
Manmade Carbon CO2 Pollution Has Already Put Us on Track for 20 Metres of Sea Level RiseThe 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 Continue reading Sea Level Rise vs Atmospheric CO2
Why has the Sun been so quiet?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… Continue reading Silent Sun
A Rambling Geomagnetic PoleMagnetic North made an unusual and historic shift. For the first time in more than 220 years of map making, Ordnance Survey has noted that North lies East, and not West, of Grid north for parts of Southern Britain. But how does this shift in magnetic field affect map reading in Scotland’s hills? Continue reading North by Northeast: The Trouble with the Earth’s Shifting Magnetic Field
The Rosetta SpacecraftJanuary 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…
Launched in March 2004 by ESA (European Space Agency), it has since travelled around the Sun five times, picking up energy from Earth and Mars to line itself up with its final destination. Continue reading Waiting for Rosetta to Wake Up…
Chris Hadfield’s Space Oddity♫ This is Ground Control to Major Tom… ♫
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. Continue reading Living out in Space: From ‘Major Tom’ to Major Tim
Can you Solve the Murder by the Loch?Well, you can try… I love a gothic mystery, don’t you? 😉
You have six weeks to do it – and a staged murder at Strathclyde University’s Ross Priory house – using the techniques of forensic science. Starting NOW. Continue reading CSI Scotland: Murder by the Loch – Studying the Forensics…
Voyager leaves the Solar SystemA lot of things happen in 12 months. And 2013 is no exception.
Remember when you were a kid back in 1977, when Voyager-1 was all the talk? Remember the wonderful artefact it carried away into space like a gift from the Earth human civilisation – the golden disc and the message on it? Where is it now? Continue reading 2013: A Year in Physical Science and Technology
A Comet is not just for Christmas…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. Continue reading Making Plans on the Comet – C/2012 S1 IS ON!!
The Coral Barrier Reef is Only in the Mood Once a Year.Aawww!! What? Not what you were expecting? What are you like… Anyway, it made you look! 😉
This great sex show, the greatest sex show on Earth, happens every year, around about now, in November. When the tides are just right and the Moon is full, the Coral Reef literally erupts! Continue reading November’s Greatest Sex Show on Earth
Typhoon Haiyan of the PhilippinesTyphoon 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… Continue reading In the Eye of Super Typhoon Haiyan
The Day of the Chelyabinsk AsteroidJust 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 the Continue reading Chelyabinsk Asteroid: Nine Months After The Russian Meteor Impact
What is Energy?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… Continue reading The Law of Conservation of Energy: Life’s a Roller Coaster!
The Latest Physics Nobel Prize LaureateThe 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…
At the end of the 19th century, many people considered Physics as the foremost of sciences. Perhaps chemical engineer Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) saw it in this way too, and that is why Physics was the first prize area which he did mention in his will. Continue reading Physics Nobel Prize 2013: Scotland’s Own Peter Higgs
Describing The World Dynamics So FarAccording 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.
And since there is no accepted unified field theory, it remains an open line of research. Canadian graduate student Timothy Blais decided to explore the idea and promote his findings in a way that really rocks… ♫ Continue reading Strings + A Capella = “Bohemian Gravity”?
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 document summary is 36 pages long. The report includes 14 chapters and a dizzying amount of graphs, data and figures. Here are just a few… Continue reading IPCC 2013 Stockholm – Latest Findings on Climate Change
Colour Perception – The Eye of the BeholderSeeing the World in glorious colours is central to our lives. Colours shape the way we behave. They affect our mood and our perception. They can influence the way we interact and respond to social and environmental stimuli, whether we are directly aware of it, or through subliminal awareness of our external world. Again, it is one of those things that most people take for granted in everyday life.
Colour perception is all subjective. Colours only exist when three components are present: a viewer, an object, and light. Continue reading Colour Perception and Retinal Neurons – Attempting to Map the Human Brain
Fundamentals of Music AcousticsAny 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… Continue reading The Art and Science of Music Acoustics – From the Humble Flute to the Mighty Didgeridoo (Featuring Tarzan…)
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