I’ve just had another ‘Philiosophy of Science’ meeting where we were talking about social responsibility. The topic of the Manhattan Project came up and the Hiroshima and Nagisaki bombs as well as the Challenger Distaster and Columbia. We ended up discussing how many people die every year globally and how…

I’ve just spent the weekend in Rome. In fact I had one of the best holidays ever running around the Italian capital and generally being silly with my friends. We also visited the Vatican, naturally, and so upon returning home I thought I should do a Roman Catholic Orbiting Frog…

I love this picture. It comes from the Flickr Astrophotography group, which is featured in the sidebar of Orbiting Frog. I didn’t know that one could capture a sunspot during a sunset but it seems you really can.
Go and check out fdecomite’s photos and you’ll find…

Big doesn’t quite cover this blog post.

For the past few weeks in my role as a demonstrator in the first year undergraduates lab, I have been supervising the experiment titled Large Scale Structure of the Universe. The experiment itself is a slightly painful exercise involving a series of simulated optical…

For a week now, NASA has been trying to get back in touch with the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft that has been in space for over a decade now.

The MGS has for ten years been scouting out future landing sites for NASA whilst also returning amazing images during its systematic…

I have decided that instead of painstakingly creating my own page of Night Sky info each month i shall simply link to a very good one from the BBC. Its succinct, its to the point and is frankly better than mine anyway!

The link to this page can be found on…

Skywatchers, ho! The Leonid meteor shower is now kicking off right above our heads. This often spectaculat shower results from the Earth’s passage through trails of particles left behind by comet Tempel-Tuttell. Tempel-Tuttle was itself discovered by two people independently, in 1865 and 1866.

In 1833 the Leonids were so powerful…

The last time it happened was in 2003 and the next time will be 2016. The November 2006 transit of Mercury was watched by millions of people and a few spacecraft too.

Occuring between the evening of Wednesday 8th of November to the morning of Thursday 9th, GMT, Mercury appeared to…

Yesterday was the weekly Philosophy of Science Meeting which is held in the Chart Room* next to my office here at the University. We were discussing the idea of a tribe of isolated people who might have a complete understanding of the way the world works. In their view, the…