These are some of my cosmology posts
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The equinox 20 March 2023
In 2023 March 20 is the date of the March equinox and is also the first day of spring (or the first day of autumn if you’re one of my readers in the Southern Hemisphere). In this post I’ll talk about the equinoxes and discuss the commonly held, but not quite correct, view, that they…
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Christmas Day January 7th?
Happy New Year to my readers and followers and I hope you have successful 2023. Although for most us the Christmas and New year festivities are over, for followers of the Orthodox form of Christianity, Christmas is yet to come, as they don’t celebrate their Christmas until January 7. The reasons for celebrating Christmas 13…
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No more leap seconds
With all the events going on in the world it passed almost unnoticed that a decision was made recently to abolish the leap second. The resolution was made on 18 November 2022 during a meeting held in Paris held by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. What is a leap second? The length of…
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COP27 November 2022
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…
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Sputnik 2
Updated 16 December 2015 It is more than 68 years since the launch of Sputnik 2 on November 3 1957 by the Soviet Union. It was only the second spacecraft to go into space and followed the successful launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957. Sputnik 1 was a small metal sphere whose only piece…
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Daylight Saving Time ends 2022
In the early hours of Sunday 30 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 it is falling out of favour The beginning of DST…
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4 October 1957 – Sputnik 1
Updated 17 December Despite the somewhat difficult relations between Russia and the West in the last few years, it is worth looking back over 68 years to October 1957 and the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1. This historic event, which caught many in the West by complete surprise, was the beginning of…
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Frank Drake and the Drake equation
I was saddened to find out about the recent death, at the age of 92, of Frank Drake, one of the pioneers of SETI. One of the things he is most famous for is the equation bearing his name which estimates the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy, the Drake equation. As a tribute…
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Fake Astronomical Images
A friend of mine, the keen amateur astronomer Colin Henshaw, brought the following photograph to my attention. It appears to show the Moon rising over Mossel Bay in South Africa. Although it was passed off as a genuine image, in fact it must be a fake. If you study the Moon, it is how it…
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Our finely-tuned Universe part III – Explanations for fine tuning
Updated 26 November 2025 As discussed previously our Universe appears to be very finely tuned and is governed by four fundamental interactions. A relatively small increase or decrease in the strength of one of these interactions, such as making the force of gravity weaker or stronger, would make the emergence of life impossible. The four…
Explaining Science 