The Wonder MaterialTen years ago, the discovery of the wonder material – Graphene – was announced. Graphene is thin, stronger than steel, flexible, non-metallic, yet electrically conductive. For all these reasons, graphene promises to transform electronics, as well as other technologies. Because of its potential in industry, researchers have been looking for ways to make defect-free graphene in large amounts. Continue reading Graphite to Graphene… in a Kitchen Blender
The Language of NatureThey are found everywhere in Nature. From the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the petals of a flower, the bracts of a pine cone, or the scales of a pineapple. The Fibonacci numbers are applicable to the growth of every living thing: a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, all of mankind. From sunflowers to sea shells, the same recurrent mathematical pattern can be observed in Nature, again, and again, and again… Continue reading Fibonacci’s Golden Spiral – The Relationship between Maths and Nature
Salar de Uyuni, BoliviaA crisp and perfectly flat white plain lies like freshly fallen snow, 100 kilometres (60 miles) across and 3,600 metres (12,000 ft) up in the remote Bolivian Andes. This hauntingly beautiful place, Salar de Uyuni, could be part of the key to tackling climate change, helping to wean the World away from its love of fossil fuels. Continue reading Salted Earth – At one Corner of the Lithium Triangle
Sleuthing with Time-of-Flight Mass SpectrometryTime-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry is a technique for separating ions of different masses by measuring the time taken to traverse a fixed distance through a magnetic field. Sounds a bit arcane? The technique is used daily by forensic investigative teams to research criminal profiling and provide reliable evidence for the prosecution… Continue reading We Delve into Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry Forensics!
Versatile Copper: Connecting Us for GenerationsCopper occurs naturally in rocks, as native copper, and the history of its use by the oldest civilisations dates back to at least 10,000 years. These days, copper is in ever increasing demand for its extraordinarily versatile conductive and ductile properties, highly sought-after by the power generation, electronics and communications industries. Remote barren war-torn Afghanistan harbours great stores of the mineral… Continue reading Fuelling our Lust for Copper – Mining in Afghanistan…
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?
Celebrities you Thought you Knew Everything AboutThis blog isn’t really “trendy”… “Physicists aren’t cool, and you never meet them anywhere anyway because they are all lesser known characters, some of them shady, who spend all their time toiling in obscurity on things no one does understand.” Continue reading Quantum Physicists in Disguise…
Zircons are ForeverThe oldest remaining grain of early Earth’s original solid rock crust has now been confirmed to be a 4.374-billion-year-old zircon crystal from Jack Hills, Australia. Continue reading Earth’s Crust – Could the Jack Hills Zircon be its Oldest Piece collected to date?
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.
Overused for Millenia…Ancients called mercury the “first matter” from which all other metals were formed. For centuries, mercury, a heavy metal, was also used in medicine. Yet mercury is now in such disfavour that an international treaty exists to curb its use… Continue reading Mercury: Beautiful Poison
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
What is RoboEarth?A world wide web for robots to learn from each other and share information is being unveiled for the first time. The eventual aim of the system is that both robots and humans will be able to upload information to the cloud-based database, which would act as a kind of common brain for machines. Continue reading http://www.roboearth.org/ – The Matrix is Everywhere…
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
An Essential Molecule for the Sustainability of LifeWater. H2O. The chemical formula is simple. Two atoms of hydrogen H and one atom of oxygen O, held together by covalent bonds, are all it takes to make what is perhaps the most fundamental substance to life on Earth. Continue reading Water of Life
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