Our incredible shrinking brains
March 8, 2019
In his 1991 book Consciousness Explained, the cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett describes the juvenile sea squirt, which wanders through the sea looking for a rock to cling to. On finding one, it no longer needs its brain. So it . . . eats it. Dennett …
In the beginning…
December 17, 2018
The greatest discovery in the history of science is that there was a day without a yesterday. The universe has not existed for ever but was born. Almost 14bn years ago, all matter, energy, space — and even time — burst into being in a titanic fireball …
Superflares
October 25, 2018
The energy of the Sun powers all living things on Earth, alongside all the advances in human technological civilisation. But what the Sun has so generously given us it could take away in an instant. According to two astronomers in the US, a ‘superflare …
The central magic of science
August 23, 2018
“Le Verrier, in deducing the location and properties of an unseen planet, had revealed the the central magic of science: its ability to predict things never before suspected, which then turn out to actually exist in the real universe. As the biologist …
G-waves: What’s all the fuss about?
June 28, 2018
My article on the discovery of gravitational waves. It was commissioned by The Sunday Times but did not find a slot. So here it is.
Neutrinos: the key to the Universe
May 21, 2018
Hold up your thumb. A hundred billion neutrinos are flying through your thumbnail every second. Eight and a half minutes ago they were in the heart of the Sun… Read more (New Humanist Subscribe)
We love you, Dick
May 11, 2018
“The day Richard Feynman died, students at the California Institute of Technology hung a banner across the face of the institute’s nine-story Millikan library. The banner read simply: ‘We love you, Dick.'” Today, on the 100th anniversary of the birth o …
The enigma of gravity
April 23, 2018
With the death of gravity maestro Stephen Hawking and the discovery of gravitational waves from space in 2015, there has never been a better time to get up to speed on gravity. But, if you think gravity is a perfectly understood force, think again. Con …
Stephen Hawking, 1942 – 2018
March 14, 2018
Stephen Hawking was one of the most imaginative and influential physicists of his generation yet he never won the Nobel Prize. He wrote a popular science book that became a publishing sensation but which is arguably the least-read bestseller of all tim …
The Pope of physics
March 6, 2018
My review of The Last Who Knew Everything: The life and times of Enrico Fermi by David Schwartz. It was commissioned by The Sunday Times but did not find a slot. So here it is.