On 18 December a Ariane 5 rocket will take off from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, aboard it will be the $12 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) - the most expensive scientific instrument ever launched into space. In this post I’ll talk about this remarkable telescope and the mission to deploy it.… Continue reading James Webb Telescope
Update 1 January 2022. This poll is now closed. To see the results click here Now that Europe and North America have moved back to winter time from Daylight Saving Time my readers living in these regions will be experiencing the darker evenings and lighter mornings. I have decided to create a poll about how… Continue reading Poll – Would you abolish DST?
In the early hours of Sunday 31 October the clocks go back an hour throughout most of Europe and daylight saving time (DST) comes to an end. In this post I'll talk about the practice of putting the clocks backwards and forwards and why this may be coming to an end The beginning of DST… Continue reading Daylight Saving Time ends
In 2019, the year before the restrictions of the covid-19 pandemic, the world energy consumption was slightly higher at around 170 000 TWh. In this post I will talk about some of the science behind this amazing fact and discuss the challenge of getting solar energy from where it is plentiful to where it is… Continue reading Opportunities for solar energy
In 2021 September 22 is the date of the September equinox and is also the first day of autumn (or the first day of spring if you're one of my readers in the Southern Hemisphere). In this post I’ll talk about the equinoxes and discus the commonly held view that they are the two days in… Continue reading September 22 the equinox
Explaining Science 