Tag: Earth
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Proving Heliocentricity
Is it stupid to think that the Sun revolves around the Earth? Well, of course anyone even slightly exposed to scientific thinking who believes that today is certifiably a fruitcake or, as Professor Brian Cox puts it “a nobber”. But proving heliocentricity – unlike, say, the spherical nature of the Earth, is not actually all…
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Gamma ray bursts are not that rare
Yesterday it was reported that scientists have suggested that an anomalous peak in radioactive materials discovered in antarctic ice sediments and in ancient Japanese cedar trees could be explained by a gamma ray burst hitting the Earth in the 8th century CE. The BBC radio report I head described gamma ray bursts as “extremely rare” and the…
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Evolution and the second law of thermodynamics
When I wrote my first piece about Roger Penrose‘s Cycles of Time – one of the links offered to me was to a Christian fundamentalist blogger who claimed that the second law of thermodynamics showed evolution could not have taken place: E. Evolution contradicts the Second law of Thermodynamics In the Theory of Evolution it…
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Earth surrounded by a ring of anti-protons
The “solar weather forecast” for the next few years is for increasingly poor conditions – as the solar cycle picks up, more matter will fly out from the Sun and eventually collide with our planet’s magnetic field, where the trapped high energy particles will then lose energy by radiation, so potentially disrupting many of our…
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Maybe my kids should worry about 2009 BD – but I won’t
Today is my eldest daughter’s 16th birthday. That means in April 2078 she will be a sprightly 82. I will, though, I am sure, be long gone at 112. And, maybe she should be worried about 2009 BD, the 10 metre lump of rock that passes inside the Moon’s orbit this week – because on…
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So, the world did not end after all
About three hours ago (or two, if God ignored summer time), the world was supposed to have ended and the “Rapture” begun. Big yucks to all of us sceptics, of course. (Around twenty years ago a film called “Rapture” was released which focused on the bizarre beliefs of people who thought the world was about…
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