On 24 October 2014 a senior Google vice president 57 year old Alan Eustace (shown below) broke the world altitude record by jumping from a balloon from an altitude of 135,890 feet (41.4 km). When he was interviewed, after he had safely landed, he said: "..It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space... " This made me… Continue reading Space the Final Frontier- but where does it begin?
Author: Steve Hurley
Hi I am Steve Hurley. Although I work in the IT industry. I studied for a PhD in astronomy in the 1980s. My real passion is explaining scientific concepts to a non-scientific audience. My blog (explainingscience.org) covers various scientific topics, but primarily astronomy. It is written in a style that it is easily understandable to the non scientist.
Publications and videos
For links to my books and videos please visit www.explainingscience.org
Virgin Galactic: what next ?
Like many people, I was was saddened to hear about the crash of Virgin Galactic's Space Ship Two on a test flight yesterday, which resulted in the death of one of the pilots and the serious injury of the other. It is far too soon to say what caused the crash. That will have to wait… Continue reading Virgin Galactic: what next ?
The Universe Past, Present and Future.
The Universe is all existing matter and space, including all stars, planets, galaxies and the space between them. This post, which is the first in a series about cosmology discusses the origins of the Universe and its ultimate future. (All my posts on this topic can be found at https://explainingscience.org/tag/cosmology/) How large is the Universe ?… Continue reading The Universe Past, Present and Future.
Artefacts From Earth
This is the final post in a series about human efforts to contact extraterrestrials. Today I want to discuss the objects which have already been sent out into interstellar space in the hope that at some point in the distant future an alien civilisation will retrieve and decipher them. The Pioneer Plaque On 3 March 1972 Pioneer… Continue reading Artefacts From Earth
This is Earth Calling
Sending Messages to be picked up by alien civilisations is called METI (Messaging to Extraterrestial Intelligence) and is an activity which has taken place with increasing frequency over the past few decades. Advocates of METI argue that in addition to searching for extraterrestrial signals we can increase our chances of making contact with aliens by sending messages to stars which… Continue reading This is Earth Calling
Explaining Science 