science – Page 2 of 3

Are clouds effected by the extra terrestrial?

29Oct

By Amal AbdiNo Comments

Science & Technology

Are clouds effected by the extra terrestrial?

Cosmic rays are charged particles that come from outer space and bombard the Earth’s atmosphere. These particles usually decay in the early stages of the Earth’s atmosphere, raining down a shower of product particles onto the Earth’s surface. If you have never heard about cosmic rays, this may seem very alarming. But the fact is that these particles have been showering over you for your entire life, and can cause little harm. However, a collaboration of scientists from across the globe have been wondering whether this continuous barrage of extra terrestrial particles has an effect on the Earth’s atmosphere, and more particularly its cloud formation. To investigate this question, the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment, was formed. Since 1750 the Earth’s surface temperature...

7Aug

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Science & Technology

Learning to See in the Dark

Dark matter makes up 26.8% of our Universe’s energy and mass, yet we know practically nothing about it. In fact we only really know about luminous matter, such as that we are made from or see in our every day life and this only amounts to about 4% of the Universe’s energy and mass. So called, dark matter remains to this day an extremely illusive entity, only ever evidenced by cosmologists when looking at the discrepancy between the gravitational pull of a galaxy, and the mass within the galaxy. It seems that the galaxies must have much more matter within them than is visible. So what is this invisible, dark matter? Perhaps we’re about to find out. New results of the temperature of the early universe from the EDGES all-sky radio antenna experiment could change our view on dark matter enti...

4Aug

By Natasha LamNo Comments

Science & Technology

Spare Parts?

Lab-grown body parts aren’t just science fiction. Scientists all over the world are attempting to use stem cells to grow ears, livers, hearts, kidneys, blood vessels, skin and bladders in labs that are transplantable into real people. Though rare, some people are walking around with lab-grown bladders. Around 80% of the world’s transplants come from the deceased while the other 20% is mainly made up of living donors and a small percentage attributed to a lab. Many people question whether the future could see people receiving transplants from a lab, or even a ‘farm’ of lab-grown human body parts, mass produced for transplants all over the world. These organs are greatly needed. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), there are over 100,000 people waiting for a lifesaving...

28Feb

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Science & Technology

How will it all end?

Everyone always asks the question: ‘Where did we come from?’. Well why not look from the other perspective, ‘How will it all end?’ The true fate of the Universe lies, as bizarre as it may seem, in its geometry. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity formulates a particular set of field equations that have within them an unknown parameter. This parameter is known as the curvature of space-time, literally the shape of space and time, the very fabric of reality itself. Einstein proposed three situations of this parameter, known as: the “open universe”, a negative curvature leading to a saddle-like shape; the “flat universe”, where curvature is zero and thus the universe is flat; and the “closed universe”, a ballooned shaped universe with a positive curvature. Each of these situations have...

15Dec

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Science & Technology

Why WiFi?

Child Development, a respected journal of Psychology, published a paper in May of this year claiming that WiFi is linked to autism. The paper was written by Cindy Sage and Ernesto Burgio and was published in a section addressing technological risks. UK national media unfortunately picked up the story, with an article in The Daily Express asking the following question: Could wireless technology be causing MAJOR health problems in your children? Obviously, this is a ridiculous notion as there has never been any evidence that found developmental health risks linked to technology in this way. The original review and the subsequent article stated that “wireless mobile phones, laptops and tables could be causing major heath problems in children and contributing to autism and hyperactivi...

Step into the mind of young Stephen Hawking

14Dec

By Camilla ImarisioNo Comments

Science & Technology

Step into the mind of young Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most famous living scientist in the world, was born on the 8th of January 1942. After a first degree in natural science at University College Oxford, he moved to Cambridge in 1962 where he completed his PhD studies. By 1963 he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease and given two years to live. He’s now 75 years old, communicates using a single cheek muscle attached to a speech-generating device, and he continues to work and lecture internationally. His doctoral thesis “Properties of expanding universes” was published in 1966 and was released online on October 23rd. Whilst it is now available online for everyone to read, it might not be your preferred bedtime story. “By making my PhD thesis Open Access, I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at...

23Nov

By Abbie CheesemanNo Comments

Science & Technology

There’s something wrong with the Sun!

Something is wrong with the Sun! It seems that the Sun has lost 1500 times the mass of the Earth, and no one quite knows why! There is a hole in our knowledge of the Sun, and we don’t know what fills it. This is an important problem not just because the Sun is the source of our heat, and ultimately life on Earth, but it is in fact what we base most of our understanding of stars on. If we have the Sun wrong, then we’ve probably got every other star in the night sky wrong too! It is thought that our Sun is mainly comprised of light elements such as hydrogen and helium, which are the source of our star’s nuclear fusion (the bringing together of two light nuclei to make heavy nuclei). However, along with these two light elements are some heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen and iron, w...

20Nov

By Abbie CheesemanNo Comments

Science & Technology

Einstein’s Idea

On 15 September 2015, the illusive gravitational waves were detected for the first time at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). This came ninety-nine years after Albert Einstein released his revolutionary paper that predicted these ripples in space and time. Two years on, researchers from LIGO have received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for this observation, the most prestigious prize in the physics community! So, what’s all the fuss about? Back in the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton formulated his theories of what is now called Newtonian Mechanics. This involved some object moving through some space, being acted upon by some force. Makes sense right? That’s how the world that we can see works! If I push something, it moves…but it turns out to be more ...

22Sep

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Science & Technology

AI on the Radar

Ever since its inception, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has not only been at the forefront of technological advancement but also a major theme within many action films. What many films of the last decade have told us is that AI will either stage a hostile takeover of the world, or send us into obsolescence by one day replacing us, thus taking over the world regardless. For any journalist, current or aspiring, that day may be today, as it was announced earlier this year that Google is funding an AI program that will create news stories for publications. Google manages a fund, the Digital News Initiative (DNI), that awards grants to digital journalism projects around Europe. They awarded a grant of over £600,000 to Ireland’s Press Association and Urbs Media for their collaboration on the R...

20Sep

By Simon WilliamsNo Comments

Science & Technology

Orbital Explains: The Line At Infinity

You’ve probably never stood on a train track, and looked as it disappeared off into the distance. But let’s imagine you have. The two mutually parallel tracks seem to meet just as they venture over the crest of the horizon - a strange illusion. You know that the two tracks can never meet, because a train has to be able to move over them, with a fixed distance between its wheels. Perhaps it is just an illusion, created by the optical receptors in your eye - or perhaps it isn’t. In Euclidean mathematics, two parallel lines will exist along side each other at a fixed length and never meet. Euclid also explained that two lines will meet at exactly one point, unless they are parallel. This idea upsets modern day mathematicians, who don’t like the word ‘unless’; they believe it’s not elegant....