These are some of my cosmology posts
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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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Debunking Fake Astronomy Photos on Social Media
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…
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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…
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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…
Explaining Science 