COVID has not only dominated our lives for the best part of a year now, but has also dominated the news, and scientific developments which would normally be on the forefront of the news have been out-shadowed by grim talk of vaccines, death tolls and new strains. Although we may not have got rid of…
Science
Is our current understanding of the Universe wrong?
The Universe is expanding, this we know for sure, but for decades Physicists have been struggling to understand and work out the rate of this expansion – this is often thought of as one of the greatest mysteries in science. The Hubble Constant, named after the famous American Astrophysicist Edwin Hubble, is the value given…
Science
New evidence discovered from black hole collision
Scientists have discovered the largest collision of two black holes ever detected. Researchers detected gravitational waves originating from 17 billion light-years away. Due to the expansion of the universe, this collision would have occurred 7 billion years ago, making it the oldest detected collision, having happened at slightly before halfway through the universe’s lifespan. This…
Arts
Degas at the Opera
I visited Paris over the Halloween weekend, and one of my stops throughout the city was the Musée d’Orsay. This museum is in a beautiful building that was previously a train station built in 1900, which now houses mostly French art from the late 1800s and early 1900s. To my delight, I found that the…
Science
The hunt for dark energy
It is currently widely accepted that both space and time started with the Big Bang. The universe started as a small singularity that was infinitely dense and has continuously expanded since. This can be evidenced by an observed pattern called redshift (a result of the wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation increasing). However, gravity in simple terms…
Science
The future of human spaceflight
This year marks 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission, but what is the future of human spaceflight over the next ten years? This talk, chaired by journalist Richard Hollingham, included a panel of guests all with different backgrounds in spaceflight: European space agency engineer Vinita Marwaha, science journalist Sue Nelson, extreme medical doctor Beth…
Film
The death of DVD
In the last decade society has shifted from having DVD’s lining the shelves of TV cabinets and bookcases, to streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime dominating the film and television industry. DVDs were a phenomenon when they were first invented and changed the shape of both the television and film industries. Unlike CD’s, the…
Film
First Man – There’s a flag controversy? This movie’s great
Right from that opening sequence, this movie draws you in: Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) is in the cockpit of an X-15 on a test flight. Despite his face being hidden inside his helmet, you can sense his panic and it feels like you are there with him. The close-up shots give this cockpit a claustrophobic…
Science
Real life Waters of Mars?
It may sound like an episode of Doctor Who, but scientists believe that they may have found an underground lake on Mars. Blurry radar scans of the planet reveal what is believed to be a frozen, salty reservoir some 12- miles across and lying around one mile beneath the surface of the planet’s South…
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