Journey of Mankind

The Bradshaw Foundation have a fantastic animation which depicts the migration of humans over the past 160,000 years.

It is the result of work by scientist Stephen Oppenheimer and is based on mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosome evidence, archaeology, climatology, and fossil study and tracks the routes and timing of our migration out of Africa and around […]



42: The answer to Life, the Universe and the mass of the Milky Way

It may or may not be the answer to life, the Universe and everything, but coincidentally 42 is the mass of our galaxy, 3 x 10 to the power of 42 kilograms to be more precise.
The mass of the Milky Way Galaxy was determined by an international team of scientists and presented this week at […]



Intelligent Design is Bullshit

In response to a petition from the Science, Just Science campaign (good job guys!), the British Government have announced that religious garbage such as creationism and intelligent design are bullshit have no place on the science curriculum in schools.
“The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and […]



Scramjet hits Mach 10

An experimental scramjet engine was successfully tested this week in outback Australia. The scramjet, which is a joint development between Australian and US Defence forces reached speeds of 11,000 km/h or ten times the speed of sound! (Mach 10) during it’s 12 minute flight.
A scramjet requires supersonic airflow through the engine, to achieve this a […]



We are here: The Pale Blue Dot

This is a vid on the Pale Blue Dot, an iconic image captured by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of 6.4 billion kilometres (4 billion miles) on February 14, 1990.
The vid has been put together by aspiring film maker David Fu and it’s a great piece of work. Carl Sagan’s narration is […]



James Webb Space Telescope

NASA says that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on track for launch in 2013. The new telescope will replace the awesome Hubble telescope which has been responsible for a multitude of scientific discoveries and has captured countless amazing images of our universe since its launch in 1990. The JWST will be siginificantly larger […]



British X-Files to go online

Following the lead of the French National Space Agency, the British Ministry of Defence is also planning to make its records of UFO sightings available to the public online. There are 24 files each documenting between 200 - 300 cases planned for release, including an event that occurred in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in 1980 which […]



China and Russia join forces to go to Mars

China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars with a launch date in May 2009. The mission will use a Russian booster to send a Chinese satellite and a Russian probe dubbed “Phobos explorer” to the red planet. After a 10 month journey the plan is for the Chinese satellite to enter Martian […]



New Horizons image of Io

The image of Io above was taken by the New Horizons probe as it recently sped through the Jupiter system on it’s way to Pluto. The image was taken with the spacecrafts Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) from a distance of 2.5 million kilometers. Clearly visible in the 11 o’clock position of the Jovian moon […]



Top Gear: Faraday cage

from Wikipedia
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material, or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks out external static electrical fields. Faraday cages are named after physicist Michael Faraday, who built one in 1836 and explained its operation.
The electrical charges in the enclosing conductor repel each […]



New radiation sign for dummies

The International Atomic Energy Authority unveiled a new danger sign for radiation today. The sign is the result of five years of research which involved testing more than 1650 people in 11 countries.

So, as well as the traditional exclamation mark trefoil, a skull and crossbones is there to belt and braces the fact that […]



181 things to do on the Moon

NASA is planning to send astronauts back to the Moon before 2020 and obviously wants them to be busy when they get there. The space agency has asked 1000 people from various backgrounds and institutions for ideas of what to do when we revisit our nearest neighbor.
Host entertainment events on the Moon that will generate […]