Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Last Month I reported that July 2016 was the Hottest July ever in human history. Now that we have the raw data for August, we can take a peek and see if it is following the ongoing trend. So is it? Yes, it very much is. OK, so I was being a tad dramatic last month when … Read more
The UK’s Met office has issued the following announcement … Scientists discover unprecedented atmospheric behaviour has disrupted one of world’s the most repeatable atmospheric patterns. The normal flow of air high up in the atmosphere over the equator, known as the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, was seen to break down earlier this year. These winds in the stratosphere are found … Read more
Phil Plait writes about the “The Great Kersten Blunder”, the story of a probe to Venus that was lost because a programmer made a stupid mistake. OK, first the actual story. The great Kersten Blunder is about the error made by Kersten (programmer) on the Vigor space probe’s converting program. He made an error in the … Read more
You might have become rather excited if you spotted the news about the detection of an apparently artificial signal coming from a distant star, for example The Observer published this on 29th Aug … Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space If the signal is truly from an alien world, … Read more
Once a view is adopted and embraced, is that it, or can humans break free? The answer is of course that people can and do break free from previous ideas and instead accept that they were once wrong. Generally however it does take time, and they also need to work it out for themselves. Chad Myers … Read more
Peter Wadhams, perhaps one of the world authorities on sea ice, has a new book that might be of interest. It is quite rightly called “A Farewell to Ice“. Well OK, not quite published yet, because publication date is 1st Sep in the UK (alas US folks, it is not out there until next Feb, but hey … Read more
