These are some of my cosmology posts
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Our finely-tuned Universe part II – Examples of fine tuning
Updated 26 November 2025 In a previous post I talked about the four forces which govern the way the Universe works. I’m now going to give some examples of fine tuning. How different our Universe would be if these four forces had very different relative strengths. Summary of the Four Forces The Universe is governed…
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June 21 2022 – the solstice
This year, the June solstice will fall on 21 June. As most people know, In the northern hemisphere, it is the day of the year when there is the most daylight and when the Sun is at its highest in the midday sky. The origin of the word solstice is from two Latin words: sol, which…
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Our Finely-tuned Universe Part I-Fundamental forces
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…
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The Lyrids 2022
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…
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Effects of Large Satellite Constellations on Astronomy
Many of you will have seen the images back in 2019 which showed long ‘trains’ composed of up to sixty SpaceX Starlink satellites crossing the sky in a straight line. These pictures hit the headlines not only because of the number of satellites, but because of their brightness. A ‘train’ of SpaceX Starlink satellites,…
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The equinox 20 March 2022
In 2022 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 incorrect, view, that they are the…
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The end of the International Space Station?
There have been stories in the news recently that NASA intend to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) in 2031. They are largely based upon a recent NASA report outlining the future of the ISS. This report makes interesting reading and describes how NASA will transition away from the ISS towards commercial space stations (which…
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Overview of tides
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…
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Happy New year 2022
Happy new year to all my readers! Shortly after most of Europe and North America moved back to winter time from Daylight Saving Time, I created a poll to see how my readers living in these regions felt about the switch. Now that we’ve entered the new year, I’ve decided to close the poll and…
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Reducing global carbon dioxide emissions
In early November 2021 much of the world’s media was focussed on the Glasgow Climate Change Conference (also known as COP26). As most of you will know, its key objectives were to get individual states to commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, to end deforestation and to plan to move away from fossil fuel…
Explaining Science 