The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is set to be one of the most ambitious science projects ever, and South Africa is one of the countries bidding to host it’s construction. I’ve said a lot on these pages about it, but most reports and pictures fail to convey the sheer scale of the thing. The attached video, from an academic presentation on the science which this project will do, should clear matters up nicely! The SKA will be a gigantic radio … Continue reading →
In Victorian times, science was an amateur’s game. Wealthy gentlemen with time on their hands amused themselves by tinkering in private laboratories, or collecting specimens in the field as they laid down the foundations of modern fields like biology or geology. These days it takes years of specialised education to call yourself a scientist, and you still need to be employed by a university, or major research lab. There is an exception though in the oldest science of all: Astronomy. … Continue reading →
We’ve all seen the footage of the Apollo 11 launch, with the camera looking down from the launch tower watching the brobdingnagian Saturn V rocket sliding past upwards. This newly released footage was filmed at ground level with a high-speed camera focused on the exhaust nozzles and shows a fascinating view of the incredible complexity and fury of what the five enormous F-1 engines, and the aftermath of the intensely hot blast on the tower. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqZploe-MtY Saturn V
Continue reading →On 13 June, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA’s) Hayabusa mission will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and parachute down to land in the Woomera Prohibited Area, Australia. Only once it has been recovered will mission scientists be able to tell if it has successfully returned a sample of asteroid Itokawa. Launched in 2003, Hayabusa was already something of a marvel. Powered by ground-breaking Ion engines, the probe was to rendezvous with Itokawa in 2005, then land, scoop up samples and … Continue reading →
NASA’s brand new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has recorded the most stunning images of superhot plasma raining down on the solar surface. Footage recorded last week over four hours revealed one of the largest solar eruptions ever seen, in which billions of tonnes of plasma are blasted out into space. Some of the debris then falls back down to the surface, having cooled down to a relatively frosty 60,000 degrees Celsius. While the phenomenon of coronal rain has been known … Continue reading →
