Jessica Copeland, Author at The Orbital

31Jan

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

Sex on the Brain

Sex is one of those topics that has a presence in so many aspects of our society – talked about on chat shows and in magazines; joked about at comedy nights and, if you’ve had the pleasure of the British education system, briefly and uncomfortably taught to you. But beyond the physical act, how many people actually understand what’s happening to their body - and their mind - during sex? Our biological desire to have sex is driven by chemical changes; in men the primary influence comes from the somewhat synonymous testosterone, while in women things are a little more complicated. Before Sex Before sex the limbic system in the brain activates. This is the region responsible for physical drives and some aspects of emotional processing, such as innate emotions like fear and aggressio...

Amazon to No Longer Accept Visa Credit Cards

18Nov

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

Amazon to No Longer Accept Visa Credit Cards

Earlier this week, Amazon announced to its customers of Amazon.co.uk that it would no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK as a payment method; a change will come into effect as early as the 19th January 2022. With so many students either using Amazon for quick purchases or holding a Prime Student account, this change will be relevant to many. What’s the reason behind this decision? Amazon stated that this decision was due to the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions. An Amazon spokesperson said the dispute has arisen due to “pretty egregious” price rises from Visa over a number of years with no additional value to its service, with the online retailer adding that costs should be going down over time due to advances in technology, “but instead th...

Climate Change and the Role of Carbon Demystified

14Nov

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

Climate Change and the Role of Carbon Demystified

Two years ago, we were warned by the UN’s Climate Council (IPCC) that we had 12 years left to limit global warming or face irreplaceable damage to the planet. Now, COP26 sees nations convening once again to try and reach an international consensus on how to battle climate change. With targets being set by the IPPC, it’s more important than ever to understand the science of climate change and how the planet came to be in this position. A Little History Although the term ‘greenhouse gas’ wasn’t introduced until 1901, the concept was first proposed in 1824 by Joseph Fourier. From there, our understanding of the greenhouse gas effect continued to evolve until the end of the century, with Irish physicist John Tyndall showing that different gases absorbed and emitted thermal radiation to ...

Hycean Worlds: A Possible New Frontier in the Search for Life Beyond Earth

15Oct

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

Hycean Worlds: A Possible New Frontier in the Search for Life Beyond Earth

The search for extraterrestrial life has conventionally been focused on Earth-like exoplanets -- terrestrial planets orbiting within the habitable zone of their host stars. This method is based on the premise that as life has risen in Earth’s conditions, somewhere with similar conditions could also give rise to life. As such, various exoplanet surveys over the years, including the Kepler and TESS satellites, have catalogued a few thousand Earth-like candidates for further investigation, finding that 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone. However, the candidate pool may have just expanded. In August this year, researchers at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy proposed a new hypothetical class of habitable exoplanets and dubbed them Hycean worlds, a ...

26Feb

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

The Death of the Kepler Satellite

After 9 years in operation, the Kepler space satellite has finally run out of the hydrazine fuel used to control its orientation. NASA has decided to retire the satellite while it is still in a safe orbit far from Earth. Launched in March 2009, Kepler was originally intended to look at one patch of the sky and detect planets orbiting around distant stars. This patch in the constellation of Cygnus contained 150,000 stars. Four years in, a fix for a mechanical issue led to the development of the K2 mission where the satellite had to be periodically reoriented, expanding its field of view to a further 500,000 stars. How to Find a Planet The satellite’s only scientific instrument was a photometer designed to detect drops in brightness that occur when a planet passes in front of a star, ...

24Jan

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

Heavens Above

Already this year the Moon has been at its closest point to the Earth. Known as the perigee, the Moon’s closest approach to the Earth occurred on January 2. This is fairly common, but was made more exciting by coinciding with the full moon, making the moon appear a bit brighter and larger. Two full moons will occur in January, and in March as well. When this happens it is known as a ‘blue moon’. Just before dawn is an excellent time to see some visible planets in January. On January 6, Mars and Jupiter are visible together just above the Southern horizon; perfect for if you’re just leaving the pub! On the January 17, there will be a new moon meaning no moon in the sky, making it perfect conditions for observing the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way and the la...

29Nov

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

International Dark Matter Day

On Monday 30 October, the Physics Department at Royal Holloway celebrated International Dark Matter Day 2017 with an evening of events. The event was hugely attended, with more than 500 people registered online and Windsor Auditorium packed for the evening’s first event, a lecture given by Dr Jocelyn Monroe. With dark matter now estimated to make up a quarter of the matter in the universe, the theory was first proposed in the 1930s when the observed rotation speeds of nearby galaxies was found to be too fast to account for the visible mass of the stars and planets them. Confirmation of its existence came in the Cosmic Microwave Background in the 2000s and even more recently in observations of gravitational lensing – where light in bent around some huge invisible mass and a magnified ima...