Physical Science

Military satellites are the long-range eyes and ears of the armed forces of several nations. If war breaks out, both sides will aim to destroy the other’s military spy satellites with ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons. Over three-quarters of all satellites launched…
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It’s a nightmare mass extinction event that scientists are racing to avoid and Hollywood loves to portray in Doomsday disaster movies: an asteroid impact that destroys Mankind and wipes out most life on Earth. Now space scientists suggest such a…
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The late Dr Carl Sagan summed it all up for us, saying “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” And these words have never rang more true than now, with the recent discovery that there are approximately three times more stars in the…
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Orion, the Hunter, is perhaps the most widely recognized of all constellations. In Greek mythology, Orion was a mighty hunter who triumphed over the mightiest beasts but fell victim to the bite of a lowly scorpion. To acknowledge this, the…
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The cheetah has always been considered one of the world’s most elegant creatures, but also among its deadliest.  It runs with such speed and grace that you would never realize that at the end of one of its sprints, it…
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The sundial is the oldest known device used for the measurement of time. The history of sundials dates back to approximately 3,500 years ago. The function of a sundial depends on the position of the Sun in the sky at…
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Everyone likes a winner, particularly when the winner is paying. The stakes with exoplanets that resemble Earth mean that there could be hope of an oasis Earth that offers potential, however small, for post-terrestrial migration. The Biosphere 2 project in…
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Radioactivity is dangerous to biological organisms and needs to be evaluated based on the frequency and magnitude of the exposure. There is always the point about doing a risk/benefit analysis but there seems to be some serious misunderstandings about what…
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There are two Ramanujan prizes, both of which were first awarded in 2005, and both of which are for 10,000. The Ramanujan Prize offered by the Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy (SASTRA) of Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India, is…
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Protons are tiny. A proton has a diameter of just 1 femtometer, or 0.000000000000001 meters. This is around 100,000,000,000 times smaller than this dot: . So, looking inside protons requires great ingenuity. In normal life we can use visible light…
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