Subcutaneous oceans on distant moons; Enceladus and Europa
Our blue Earth, rising above the lunar horizon, is an abiding image of our watery state that must evoke an […]
SciComm
Lahars; train-wreck geology
Christmas morning in New Zealand is synonymous with mid-summer barbecues at the beach, deservedly lazy times, perhaps a bit of
Overture to a cave; the spectacle of jointing in ancient basalt lava flows
Saturday August 8, 1829, Felix Mendelssohn and his traveling companion Karl Klingemann, took a boat trip to Fingal’s Cave, the
Dirt; Soil degradation is a global problem we inflict on ourselves
The media loves hyperbole. In some ways they remind me of ‘The end is nigh’ cartoon guy. This week (Oct
Near Earth Objects; the database designed to save humanity
The media love natural disasters, even those that don’t exist. Last week (early October, 2017), dramatic footage of a (simulated)
The origin of life: Panspermia, meteorites, and a bit of luck
In the opening scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey (1968), Neanderthal-like folk are scrounging for food, squabbling with a neighbouring
Class 5; The Toba eruption – how a super volcano almost stopped humanity in its tracks
Toba Lake, in northern Sumatra, occupies the ancient Toba caldera. One of its outlets, the Asahan River, is the site
The intriguing paradox of global warming piggybacking on global cooling
Flood, fire, drought … We have, by luck and muddled management, thwarted pestilence, but it seems that changing weather patterns
Earth’s vegetation responds to increasing CO2
Photosynthesis, a process that had its beginnings about 2.5 billion years ago, has an awesome responsibility; it keeps us breathing.
Hold a ‘0’ to the light and look through it – there is nothing, and everything
Several years ago I read Jerry P. King’s The Art of Mathematics (1992). Chapter 3 deals with Numbers, and in