Last night we got back from the pub and were tucking in medium rare steaks wondering what to watch on the TV. This is just the way we live, don’t judge us. Predictably there wasn’t much on, so we turned on the Playstation and clicked on the BBC iPlayer. Annoyingly it wasn’t there instantly, there…
Over the past month my life seems to have been filled with George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. It all started when I was in a bookshop in the Science Fiction section (with all the cool kids) and I noticed that the top five bestsellers in scifi were all from Martin’s A Song of…
The German satellite ROSAT is due to hit the planet this weekend. Should you worry? According to the German Aerospace Agency DLR, the odds are 1 in 2000 that it will hit someone. Let’s put that in perspective. Have you ever bought a Lotto ticket? The odds in the UK of you winning are 1 in 14,000,000. So it’s 4,375 times more likely that the satellite will squish someone than you are to win the lottery. If the pieces rain down on a city, entire buildings could be smashed with more than one person dying.
I love books. I read about a book a week – that’s not a boast, it is a sad lament on how boring my job can be. They are marvelous things that make your house look cool and make you look smart. Even if they are just Clive Cussler or Dan Brown novels. (Well maybe,…
Astronomers seemingly have the coolest job ever. They get to gaze into the depths of space at stars and black holes and try to find life bearing planets and all other manner of inspiring stuff. It’s just a shame they are such an unimaginative bunch. This picture is of a galaxy 13 billion light years away….
An entire week ago, I wrote how warm and pleasant England was. It’s now back to its standard grey drizzle. Ahh, normality. In fact, two days after the warmest October day ever, it snowed in Scotland. Again, normality. Apparently, though, this winter is going to be one of the coldest winters ever. From November onwards, for months…
The weather here in London is currently sunny, warm and pleasant. That’s an unlikely thing to write at the best of times, but it’s even more mental in October. The last week has been in the high 20s Celsius with the last three days hitting 29C every day. It was 22C in Algeria for comparison and Algeria…