Black holes: where God divided by zero
February 17, 2016
In February 1916, Albert Einstein received a surprising package. It came from a soldier serving on the eastern front… Black holes blues (New Humanist Subscribe)
Did dark matter kill off the dinosaurs?
January 21, 2016
“On Earth death rains down from the sky with metronomic regularity. At least, that was the contention of palaeontologists Jack Sepkoski and David Raup. In 1984, they claimed that mass extinctions of life on Earth occur every 30-odd million years…” Re …
General relativity at 100
December 1, 2015
In November 1915, at the height of World War I, German physicist Albert Einstein published a revolutionary theory of gravity. Not only did the general theory of relativity show that Isaac Newton, arguably the greatest scientist to have ever lived, was …
Please squeeze me
November 30, 2015
The body in the Solar System that generates the most heat pound for pound is not the Sun. It is Jupiter’s pizza moon, Io. It’s all down to rock tides (New Humanist Subscribe)
God’s number
December 1, 2015
It’s maximally uncomputable. It contains the answer to every mathematical question that can be asked about the Universe. Writing about Omega – see Chapter 19 – was one of the hardest things I have ever done. (This is also a chapter of my book on ultima …
The joy of tax
November 30, 2015
“In today’s Britain, the poorest pay a higher percentage of their income as tax than the rich, something that not only makes no moral sense but no economic sense either, since the poor spend a greater proportion of their money – thus stimulating the ec …
Why inequality is killing us all
October 23, 2015
“All of us are affected by inequality. In the words of John Donne: “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…” Review of The Health Gap by Michael Marmot (Click link to subscribe to The Times Higher Education Supplement)
The incredible exploding mosquito
August 25, 2015
How is it that something invisible can come down a wire into my home and power my PC? And not just my PC but my washing machine and my toaster and my electric lights? And not just my electrical appliances but the appliances of billions of other people …
Living in a Moore’s Law world
June 2, 2015
To be living in an epoch when computing power (or anything, for that matter) doubles roughly every two years is extraordinary. It is never going to happen again. Moore’s law has spawned computers that are around 100 million times more powerful than tho …
Happy 25th birthday, Hubble Telescope!
April 23, 2015
Twenty-five years ago this Friday, Nasa launched the Hubble space telescope. Within weeks, the American space agency realised that it had put the instrument into the Earth’s orbit with the telescopic equivalent of a squint. It was one of the most embar …