Nasa/GSFC Around 15 years ago, I was on a European Space Agency (Esa) committee, looking at Esa’s strategy for proposed forthcoming space missions. Under consideration was a mission to an asteroid. Over dinner, one of the committee members, an astrophysicist,Continue Reading
The blue duck (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos) is a species endemic to New Zealand. Graham Martin, CC BY-NC-SA Each year, millions of birds fly into power lines, wind turbines and the other man-made structures that litter the open air space. These collisionsContinue Reading
Amorn Suriyan / Shutterstock The UK has just rejoined the EU’s flagship research funding programmes, Horizon Europe and Copernicus. This is great news for science, the EU and the UK. The reasons are simple: science progresses through the individual effortsContinue Reading
Raggedstone / Shutterstock As reports continue flying in about what were traditionally called UFOs (unidentified flying objects), Nasa is taking the topic very seriously. In fact, following the publication of a report from an independent committee of experts in fieldsContinue Reading
When I watched the members of the US far-right group the Proud Boys from afar before and during the Capitol riots of January 6 2021, I thought their name was quite apt. They always seemed proud – arrogant, even –Continue Reading
Shutterstock After many years of designing and selling a variety of different cables to power and charge its devices, Apple has slowly switched to USB-C chargers for all of its products. The last device to swap is the iPhone, andContinue Reading
Cornelius Krishna Tedjo/Shutterstock Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving you with an spooky sense of pastness. But weContinue Reading
Zamurovic Brothers/Shutterstock If you looked up 66 million years ago you might have seen, for a split second, a bright light as a mountain-sized asteroid burned through the atmosphere and smashed into Earth. It was springtime and the literal endContinue Reading
Ex-Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for "seditious conspiracy" following the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Tony Prato/Shutterstock Violent extremism – be it political or religious – is a persistent global problem, which hasContinue Reading
Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock The UK government’s announcement that it had rejoined the European Union’s Horizon Europe science funding programme was cause for celebration among researchers in Britain and across Europe. But what will the terms of the deal – andContinue Reading
