The Cosmic Mystery Tour

October 20, 2018

My new book The Cosmic Mystery Tour is an illustrated account of cutting-edge science with brief stories of the quirky characters who made it possible. The universe is full of wondrous and beautiful places, but this is not just a sight-seeing trip. We will investigate how the universe works. What makes it tick! It is a […]

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A Cartographic Conundrum

September 10, 2018

In the Victorian era the British were fond of watching the pink of their empire spread outwards across maps of the world. A rather perceptive young student Francis Guthrie noticed something rather surprising while colouring the counties on a map of England. It seemed that no more than four colours were ever required to colour […]

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The Generation Game

June 10, 2018

In 2012 CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the final missing fundamental particle of the standard model. But many mysteries remain. Atoms consist of a tiny nucleus composed of protons and neutrons surrounded by a swarm of orbiting electrons. Protons are formed of two up quarks and one down quark bound together, whereas […]

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Burning Down the House

May 21, 2018

In 1998 two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, studying for PhDs in computer science at Stanford University, California founded a new tech company called Google. The company was based on an algorithm they had invented and incorporated into a new search engine—the Google browser. Less than two decades later Google is valued at well […]

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Hawking Crosses the Event Horizon

March 22, 2018

Stephen Hawking died on 14 March 2018. As a student in the 1960s he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given just two years to live. Confounding these predictions, he lived to become the world’s most famous scientist since Einstein. His incredible determination to succeed in the face of any obstacle and his drive to […]

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Hawking Radiation

March 19, 2018

What is the connection between a steam engine and a collapsed star? Not much, you might think. There is, however, a very deep and subtle connection that is still not completely understood. Brewing Up New Theories of Physics James Prescott Joule, the son of a wealthy Manchester brewer, was taught physics by John Dalton, famous […]

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The Pale Blue Dot

March 7, 2018

Voyager I was launched by NASA in September 1977, on course for the outer solar system and beyond. Carl Sagan realised the mission was an opportunity to highlight the immensity of the cosmos and acquire a new perspective on our place within it. After some persuasion, NASA agreed and in 1990 Voyager’s cameras were directed […]

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All for One and One for All

February 10, 2018

In days of old, when knights were bold, it was essential that a knight should bear an elegant mathematical symbol on his coat of arms. Well, perhaps not, but at least the Borromeo family used a design that is well known to mathematicians. The coat of arms of the Borromeo family of merchants and bankers […]

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Snowflakes are Dancing!

November 22, 2017

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is the father of modern astronomy and a key figure in the dawn of science. He was a devout and profoundly spiritual man who studied theology and was possessed by a life-long drive to understand the structure of Creation. He believed that geometry and symmetry lay at the heart of the architecture […]

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The Wheel of Fortune

November 7, 2017

We never stray far from devices that chop up our days into hours, minutes and seconds. We are now all synchronized and no-one is out of step with the rest of the world. It is difficult to imagine how different life must have been when days came and went and the passage of time was […]

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