Category: Science

There’s an excellent series on the World Service called Discovery which is in the middle of a four part strand called The New Space Race. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’m only now catching up with my recordings, I’d have mentioned this before. The full series is/will be available to listen from…

The Cassini-Huygens probe has successfully entered orbit around Saturn after it’s four year journey to the planet, taking the first of what will undoubtedly be a great set of photos. Cassini was a Genoese astronomer who amongst many achievements, discovered four of Saturn’s moons in the late 17th century. Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, discovered the…

On my way into work of a morning, I tend to flick around the radio listening to maybe Danny Baker on BBC London, sometimes Radio Five Live and of course our very own Pete & Geoff on Virgin. But halfway through my journey, I head downwards and complete it on the underground meaning that I…

Congratulations to the team of SpaceShipOne (I’ll even forgive the needless nospacesrule in their name). I did try to listen to live audio at work, but had problems, and only saw the video on the news earlier on. Quite a good source of coverage here (via Boingboing).

There are some wonderful images from the Transit of Venus across the Sun on Tuesday. Obviously I wanted to observe this myself in the best possible way. On Monday I read an article in Astronomy magazine that said I need a solar filter. OK, where do I get one of those for my camcorder at…

Good to see that Bletchley Park have finished rebuilding the Colussus Mk2. Must revisit Bletchley soon…

Living TV is making a very good living with all it’s “psychic” nonsense. This weekend was “paranormal weekend” with such shows as Street Psychic, 6th Sense with Colin Fry, and The Antiques Ghost Show (which I thought was a made up name when I first read it), as well as such American fare as Crossing…

Sadly Iceland have restarted whaling. Frankly, even if there are more minke whales alive than are stricly necessary to keep the species alive (a great state of affairs!), that doesn’t take away from the fact that they die a cruel and painful death. I should start supporting the WDCS again.

There are few interesting books on this Aventis Science Books Award shortlist. In particular Small World looks interesting.

Lots of DNA news happening at the moment. As I said, I’ve just started the Rosalind Franklin biography, someone I’ve been interested in ever since I saw Life Story back in 1987. There’s also the small fact that it’s the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the makeup of DNA. The full model has just…

Yesterday’s Guardian also published an article about whether homeopathic medicines do any good. But the story goes around in circles. It first reports the story that something called armica doesn’t work, and mentions the Horizon from last year which dismissed homeopathic claims. And yet after all that, the author’s still too scared to really go…

Tragically the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost on Saturday, and the inevitable recrimonations have begun. There have been the inevitable calls for the termination of the manned space programme. But this seems unduly reactionary, and one hopes that the accident will be carefully studied and any mistakes made, remedied. Overall the Shuttle has proved to…