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Observatory…
January 5, 2013 
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He’s Done It…
October 14, 2012 6 Comments
I wrote about Felix here and now he has done it. You can follow the whole story at the Guardian’s website.
Read moreCuriosity…
August 6, 2012 11 Comments
As you will no doubt have noticed, the Curiosity rover has successfully landed on Mars. Its mission is to explore the planet’s surface, with a particular emphasis on searching for any signs that life once existed on Mars. There may be traces of bacteria or other simple organisms and if there are then the rover […]
Read moreClear Explanation…
May 4, 2012 2 Comments
It is lovely when something is explained in such a way that the ‘light bulb’ goes on inside and one suddenly realises the point of the subject being explained. I teach for a living, but it is still relatively rare that I am sure that such an event has occurred. I often get asked about E=mc2. […]
Read moreGold Part Two…
December 22, 2011 20 Comments
Despite not answering the questions that appeared in my post on gold from yesterday(!), Dent left a series of questions that I thought needed a post of their own, as they all relate to the origin of the gold atom itself. Dent wrote… Will the earth naturally produce more gold for us to extract? How long will […]
Read moreIt’s Never The Ozone Layer…
October 8, 2011 6 Comments
Earth’s twin planet in the Solar System, Venus, has an ozone layer. The Venus Express space craft has detected the signature of ozone about 100km up in Venus’s atmosphere. Ozone is a molecule of oxygen containing three atoms of oxygen (O3) rather than the normal two (O2) that we breathe. It forms when ultra-violet light acts […]
Read moreThe Earth In Space
June 18, 2011 2 Comments
This video, from the absolutely fantastic YouTube collaboration called Sixty Symbols, explains why the 21st of June is the longest day, why we have seasons and how Eratosthenes used differences in shadow length to calculate the circumference of the world about 2000 years ago. Watch it – it’s really good.
Read moreHubbly Bubbly…
April 25, 2011 24 Comments
The Hubble space telescope was launched on April 24th 1990 on the space shuttle Discovery. In the 21 years since its installation in orbit around Earth it has taken some of the most amazing photographs of space ever recorded. Earlier this month Hubble was pointed at a pair of interacting galaxies known as ARP 273 […]
Read moreHow Science Works #1…
April 12, 2011 3 Comments
In science, a hypothesis is a speculation that might explain a particular observation. This can then be tested to try and show that it is wrong. If it cannot be demonstrated to be wrong, if it explains the observed facts and if it allows accurate predictions to be made then it may be promoted to […]
Read moreThe Elusive And Crafty Black Hole…
April 9, 2011 17 Comments
This post was written by Rolfasaurus Rex… The black hole is one of the Universe’s most confusing phenomena. There is even still a debate over whether they actually exist! Assuming that they do exist, scientists have discovered that they are amongst the most dangerous objects in the universe. A black hole is, as far as […]
Read moreMysterious Yellow Orb…
February 24, 2011 9 Comments
Yesterday dawned bright and cold. The overcast skies were now blue and dominated by a large yellow object that appeared to be a source of both light and heat. A little research and I discovered it is called the Sun and it is the ultimate source of all Earth’s energy. Even more amazingly, every star […]
Read moreSmall Blue Dot…
February 14, 2011 11 Comments
Look at the picture above. Do you see the small blue dot in the band of pale brown to the right? Do you know what that is? Go on guess! I will give you a clue. This photograph was taken by a NASA spaceship called Voyager sometime between February the 14th and June the 6th […]
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