The Universe Next Door
March 30, 2015
Discover the Universe Next Door… where time runs backwards Universe Next Door – BBC Focus (Subscribe)
Afterglow of Creation
February 23, 2015
A whopping 99.9 per cent of all the particles of light, or “photons”, in the Universe are tied up in the “afterglow” of the big bang fireball and only 0.1 per cent in the light of stars and galaxies. It’s 50 years since the discovery of the “cosmic bac …
Cecilia Payne
December 23, 2014
She wrote the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century yet hardly anyone knows her name. Here is what I wrote about Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin in New Scientist on 8 November 2003. Subscribe
5 great science books
December 17, 2014
The Folio Society asked me to write about 5 great science books in an ‘advertorial’ in New Scientist (never done one of those before!). The only proviso was that I include Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which was OK with me. Here are the 5 …
Is time travel possible?
August 25, 2014
On 23 August 2014, actor Peter Capaldi started as the new Dr Who. Which prompts an obvious question: is time travel possible? The surprising answer is: nobody knows. Physicists, despite trying for almost a century to rule it out, have so far failed. Th …
10 cosmic myths
August 9, 2014
The big bang was the beginning of the Universe… and 9 other cosmic myths New Humanist (Subscribe)
How farming gave us the iPhone
March 12, 2014
We live in an age of relentless innovation – and it’s all because our ancestors started planting crops, says Marcus Chown New Humanist (Subscribe)
Where did the complexity of the Universe come from?
September 17, 2013
We live in a random universe, explains Marcus Chown New Humanist (Subscribe)
The great NHS robbery
January 10, 2013
The Health and Social Care was passed 27 March 2012. Crucially and most seriously, it removes the UK government’s obligation to provide universal healthcare in England, something so fundamental it amounts to the abolition of the NHS. As Dr Jacky Davis, …
OK, Computer
November 18, 2013
When Marcus Chown was commissioned to write a book explaining everything, he wasn’t worried. Then he realised he had to tackle a chapter on computers. He explains what he learnt, and why it was more fascinating than he ever thought possible… The Inde …