Earth rising

Check out this astonishing clipof the Earth rising and setting over the surface of the Moon. It was taken by the KAGUYA orbiter from about 100km above the Moon’s surface. The images are so good because they were shot in high definition – the first time gthe Earth has been caught from space in such [...]

Exotic meson spotted at Belle

Particle physicists on the Belle experiment at the KEK electron-positron collider in Japan, have just announced something exciting – the first meson with non-zero electrical charge. Mesons are particles that experience the strong force and until now, everyone thought they were made up of a quark and a matching anti-quark. Since quarks and their anti-quarks [...]

Venus rising

Having children who don’t ever sleep past 6.30 in the morning has one important benefit – you get to see the pre-sunrise sky.  Venus looks particularly lovely in the east at 5.15am, with the glow of soon-to-rise sun just below it. A couple of weeks back, there was a particularly nice juxtaposition of Venus and [...]

Completing the circle

I hear that CERN has today finally joined together all the sections of the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC). They’ll now be able to start cooling the thing down to 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (–271.3°C). That’s pretty chilly when you consider that most of space simmers away at a relatively warm 2.73 degrees above absolute zero – the [...]

Life on other planets?

This interesting looking piece of equipment is called SuperWASP. Or more correctly, it’s one of two SuperWASPs. One is on the island of La Palma in the northern hemisphere while the second is in South Africa.
Despite looking like something a mad inventor might have cobbled together in his garden shed, it’s actually a very sophisticated [...]