Over the next few weeks much of the world's media will be focused on Sharm El Sheik in Egypt, where the United Nations Climate Change conference is taking place. My own view is that our chances of significantly reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over the next 10-15 years or so don’t look particularly… Continue reading COP27 November 2022
Updated May 2026 Since the original post back in 2022 there has been an explosion of fake and inaccurate content on social media this is discussed in my post: Why Social Media Fails at Accurate Astronomy Content ---- A friend of mine, the keen amateur astronomer Colin Henshaw, brought the following photograph to my attention. The… Continue reading Debunking Fake Astronomy Photos on Social Media
Updated 26 November 2025 This is first of a series of three posts in which I'll talk about the idea that the fundamental forces which govern our Universe and fundamental constants such as: the strength of gravity, the electric charge of the electron and the amounts of matter, dark matter and dark energy in the… Continue reading Our Finely-tuned Universe Part I-Fundamental forces
The night of 22/23 April will be the peak of the Lyrids, one of the most famous prolific meteor showers. Meteors (also known as shooting stars) are bright streaks of light caused by small lumps of rock or metal called meteoroids hitting the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed. As they pass through the atmosphere they get heated… Continue reading The Lyrids 2022
Updated 16 December 2025 Even though the Moon is far smaller and less massive than the Earth its gravitational field still has significant effects on our planet. The most noticeable of these are tides, the periodic rise and fall of sea levels. In this post I'll give an overview of the causes of tides. This… Continue reading Overview of tides
Explaining Science 