These are some of my latest posts
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Enceladus Could there be life 10 years on
Doesn’t time fly ! 🙂 Ten years have passed since I wrote my first post on my Explaining Science blog (originally called The Science Geek). I have decided to mark the occasion by reblogging my first ever post. Over the last ten years the question whether there are primitive life forms on Saturn’s icy moon…
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Fact-Checking a December Solstice Article
Sometimes a video can convey a message better than a simple blog post and videos tend to reach a slightly different audience. I do get irritated by poor reporting of science topics in the mainstream media (maybe I am getting grumpy? 😊 ). So here’s a video about the errors in the article about the…
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Easter March 31 2024
Revised 18 December 2025 -original post published in 2024 In 2024, for the majority of the world’s Christians, March 31 was Easter Sunday, one of the most important dates in the calendar. Although Easter originated as the festival celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, it is also widely marked by non-Christians in the UK, particularly as…
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Seasonal Changes in an English Garden
This post is a departure from my usual topics of astronomy and more general science. In 2020, I took a series of photos of my back garden. This year was, for those of us in the UK – like many countries in the world, the year of the lockdowns due to the covid pandemic. A…
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Will Humanity Combat Climate Change Effectively?
The post reflects on the ongoing challenges of addressing climate change, particularly the failures of international conferences like COP3 and COP21 to effectively curb carbon emissions. Despite some progress, global carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, with projections indicating significant temperature increases if current trends persist. The urgency for meaningful action remains.… Continue reading Will…
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Correcting Scientific Misconceptions: The December Solstice
I am still surprised how many articles on otherwise reputable websites when writing about scientific topics are riddled with errors and have clearly been written by lazy journalists with no knowledge of the subject they’re talking about. One of the worst examples was an article on the December 2023 solstice which recently appeared on a…
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December 22 2023 – the solstice
This year, the northern hemisphere winter solstice will fall on 22 December. On this date there are the fewest hours of daylight and, during the day, the Sun reaches its lowest elevation. The origin of the word solstice is from two Latin words: sol, which means Sun, and sistere, to stand still. At the time of the winter…
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Books from Explaining Science 2023
Update 30 August 2025 I have extensively expanded and rewritten all three “A Short Guide to…” e-books. I will make these books available on Kindle for a competitive price. However, in future I won’t do any deals where I offer free or discounted prices on these books for a limited time period. I believe the books offer…
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Is the Universe curved?
In this post I’ll talk about curvature, what terms such as flat, positive and negative curvature mean and how this applies to the Universe. I won’t use complex mathematical definitions here, but intuitively curvature is a measure of how much a two-dimensional surface deviates from being flat. This concept can be extended to any number…
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Rising use of fossil fuels
I was disturbed to read the recent UN report pointing out that the government plans and projections from the major fossil fuel producers would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050. This conflicts with government commitments under the Paris Agreement, and…
Explaining Science 