Asteroids
Asteroids are rocky worlds revolving around the Sun, also known as planetesimals; they are the remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago, that are too small to be called planets. Most of this ancient space rubble can be found orbiting between...
Earth’s Swansong
The Sun will go blackEarth sink in the sea,Heaven be stripped of itsbright stars;Smoke rage and fire, leapingthe flameLick heaven itself.-The Deluding of Gylf Strange times are upon us, we seem beset by continuing problems with our inability to respect and harness our planet’s limited resources. Climate change, carbon emissions,...
Why Study Geology
Geology: The branch of science concerned with the physical structure and substance of the Earth, the processes which act on these, and the Earth’s development since its formation. During their relatively...
Lithium: From Mining to Medicine
Though it’s not something one hears about that often, lithium – the planet’s lightest metal – has some pretty heavy implications for the environment, the economy and modern life as we know it. Despite being one of the first three chemical elements to form in the Big Bang, along with...
Earth’s Magnetic Field: Is North going South?
It is fairly common knowledge that, when placed upon a flat surface anywhere in the world, the arms of a magnetic compass will swing round, gently oscillating until they reveal one’s orientation in relation to the North and South Poles. This is possible because of the Earth’s magnetic field which,...
How Big is the Universe?
The Universe is a big, big place. Getting your head around mind-bendingly big and unimaginably small things is really hard, our brains just weren’t built to do it. To survive as a human, all evolution required of our ancestors was the ability to outrun and outwit predators long enough to...
Titan: the moon raining plastics & flowing with lakes of liquified natural gas
Roughly the size of the planet Mercury, Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Wrapped in a thick, frothy orange atmosphere made primarily of nitrogen and a bit of methane, Titan is the only other place besides...
Viruses: are they alive?
Sometimes, it can help to think about a topic from an objective, scientific point of view. This can help to ease anxieties surrounding the subject. With all the overwhelming influx of news centering around one subject lately, let’s take a moment to get away from Covid-19, and think about a...
Night Blight
In December 2013 I wrote a piece in KCW Today called Night Blight, about light pollution in the UK. Given the results of recent research into this problem, the question is are we succeeding? According to Brett Seymoure, a behavioural ecologist at Washington university in St Louis a leading member...
Kaboom SN2006gy Brightest Blast Ever
In a distant galaxy NGC 1260, some 250 million light-years away, occurred the most powerful explosion ever seen anywhere. Named SN2006gy, this supernova certainly stands apart. It was so energetic, it’s often called a hypernova or quark-nova. It was quickly observed by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and large ground based...
