Videos
The Astroholic in 60 Second – TRAPPIST-1 Has 7 Exoplanets
An international team of astronomers has made a great discovery. A nearby exoplanetary system has seven Earth-size planets!
Latest
How About That?
Back to the Past
Time is a curious dimension. Although we might be still in space, there’s no way for us to be still in time. And while we can explore every direction in space, time has a preferred direction: forward. We are constantly traveling through time, and for us we are going to the boring velocity of 1 […]
Journal Club
Lunatic Hypotheses or How Quickly Theories Have To Adapt
Last week, in a matter of a few days, two studies came out that brought with them a completely different perspective on our Moon. The first one, published in Nature Geoscience, was about an alternative hypothesis on the formation of our natural satellite. The (now) traditional scenario suggests t...
How About That?
Has anyone got a recipe for artificial gravity?
One of the underlying ideas in Einstein’s general relativity is that for an observer, the acceleration due to gravity, or the acceleration due to thrust, are identical. This is a consequence of the equivalence principle. This phenomenon is the way to achieve artificial gravity in space. No specia...
How About That?
Travelling through the cosmos
Space is big. The Voyager probe, launched in 1977 to explore Jupiter and Saturn, took 36 years to leave the Solar System. It is the furthest human object from us, and it is still in our neighbourhood. Even the radio waves we sent into space have barely reached a few hundred star systems, and they...
The Astroholic Live
The Astroholic LIVE – Christmas Special 2016
We were planning a happy and light Christmassy episode but since we were looking at 2016, the conversation soon took a turn for the worst. We talked about penguins, Brexit, conducting putty, special snowflakes, the star of Bethlem, and Rudolph’s problems!
How About That?
One Planet, One Climate, One culture.
One of my biggest pet peeves about sci-fi universe building is the lazy approach in building alien civilisations. We often see the trope showing one world, one climate, and one language. Given the variety that our planet has to offer under any aspect it is a shame that the same variety is lost in...
Astrophysics
Black Holes and Impossible Planets
Black holes are incredibly fascinating. They represent the unknown, the dangerous, the terrifyingly majestic. They are the modern version of the void, the abyss, the bottomless pit. Most sci-fi gets black holes right, but poetic license ignores the facts at times, and takes over to accommodate th...
Astrophysics
In Space no-one can hear you scream
According to the World Health Organization, 360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss. For the remaining 95% of the population, sound is a cardinal part of our sensory experience. It allows us to communicate easily, and to better experience the natural world. So how terrifying is i...
Videos
Smashing Galaxies – The Documentary
This documentary explores the tumultuous lives of galaxies with a focus on galaxy collision: the key mechanism in galaxy evolution.
Science Playground
Snuffing Out Candles With Carbon Dioxide
A cool thing to do if you have leftover dry ice is to snuff out candles using just carbon dioxide. You put dry ice in a jar and let it sublimate. The carbon dioxide will remain in the jug, as the density of CO2 is around 1.98 kg/m3, making it denser than the average density.
The Astroholic Live
The Astroholic LIVE – Halloween Spooktacular 2
We are back with Russell Moul to look again at the creepy and weird side of Science. From embalming to proton beams, from cryogenics to voltaic piles ending in the cost of our progress and prosperity. Happy Halloween!