On the early hours of Sunday 14 March 2021, most of the United States will put their clocks forward an hour and Daylight Saving Time (DST) will commence. Two weeks later on 28 March most countries in Europe (including the UK) will follow, switching to summer time. In this post I’ll talk about the practice… Continue reading Advancing the Clocks
Author: Steve Hurley
Hi I am Steve Hurley I have a PhD in astronomy and live near Manchester in the North West of England. My blog ( http://thesciencegeek.org) is a fairly lightweight blog about various scientific topics, but primarily astronomy. It is written in a style that it is easily understandable to the non scientist.
Publications
for detail on the books I have published please go to
http://thesciencegeek.org/about/
Solar Sails
Solar sails are the only method of spacecraft propulsion in which no fuel is needed. Until recently spacecraft powered by solar sails were the stuff of science fiction. However, following the success of the Japanese spacecraft IKAROS which flew close to Venus in 2010, and in 2019 the crowd-funded Light Sail 2 spacecraft it is… Continue reading Solar Sails
Human spaceflight in 2021
2021 will be an interesting year for human space flight. Not only is it the sixtieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first manned spaceflight, but it will be the first time that a privately operated spacecraft will arrive at the International Space Station (ISS). This private spacecraft is not just a one-off but will be… Continue reading Human spaceflight in 2021
Chinese Moon samples
Like many of my readers I was pleased to see that the Chang’e 5 spacecraft returned to Earth on 16 December 2020 with around 2 kg of lunar rocks. This great achievement was the first lunar sample return mission for China and is indeed the first time any rocks have been brought from the Moon… Continue reading Chinese Moon samples
Dark energy an unexpected finding
I offered recently to write an article for my local astronomy society on the discovery of dark energy. It is an expanded version of the blog post I wrote on the topic last year and, at over 3000 words, it is longer than my usual posts. I thought it would be of interest to many… Continue reading Dark energy an unexpected finding
