Category: Science

OK – from the outset, can I just point out that I seriously don’t recommend that you attempt to replicate the “experiments” I’m about to describe. I should also point out that while I didn’t plan on doing either of these things, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s possible. Experiment 1…

I know, I know. I’m always going on about this. But I don’t apologise for revisiting it, because it’s so important. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Horizon, and the new series started a few weeks ago, and has already produced a couple of very interesting episodes. This week’s was an examination of whether…

Great article on the DES or Data Encryption Standard – neatly summing up where we are with cryptology. This makes a nice follow up to the pieces I talked about previously on hash functions.

Very soon after the death of Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, who shared the Nobel prize with Crick and Watson, has also died at the age of 87. Read the BBC obituary here and Nature’s first piece here. UPDATE: A fine Guardian obituary is here.

A pair of fascinating articles (article 1, article 2) about hash functions and recent cryptographic breakthroughs and the possibility of many cryptographic strategies being made redundant. Great reading.

I happened to pass by Waterstones on Friday and couldn’t help but notice a display of copies of the new Roger Penrose book, The Road to Reality. This enormous book is 1000 pages long and copiously illustrated. So I picked it up and flicked through it. Let’s just first reiterate that even picking it up…

This month’s Computer Arts magazine has Stitcher 3.1 cover-mounted, and I’ve been having some fun creating those 360 degree QTVR images. I was rather pleased with an effort I created based around our tent at the V Festival. And then I was looking at some of the unfailingly fabulous images at Panoramas.dk and noticed that…

Last Sunday, The Independent on Sunday published a comment piece by the Prince of Wales about nanotechnology. It’s a well argued piece, although while we don’t get the histrionics of “grey goo” that accompanied the Prince’s last thought on the subject (not something he claims to have ever believed incidentally), he does mention thalidomide as…

There’s an excellent series on the World Service called Discovery which is in the middle of a four part strand called The New Space Race. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’m only now catching up with my recordings, I’d have mentioned this before. The full series is/will be available to listen from…

The Cassini-Huygens probe has successfully entered orbit around Saturn after it’s four year journey to the planet, taking the first of what will undoubtedly be a great set of photos. Cassini was a Genoese astronomer who amongst many achievements, discovered four of Saturn’s moons in the late 17th century. Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, discovered the…

On my way into work of a morning, I tend to flick around the radio listening to maybe Danny Baker on BBC London, sometimes Radio Five Live and of course our very own Pete & Geoff on Virgin. But halfway through my journey, I head downwards and complete it on the underground meaning that I…

Congratulations to the team of SpaceShipOne (I’ll even forgive the needless nospacesrule in their name). I did try to listen to live audio at work, but had problems, and only saw the video on the news earlier on. Quite a good source of coverage here (via Boingboing).

There are some wonderful images from the Transit of Venus across the Sun on Tuesday. Obviously I wanted to observe this myself in the best possible way. On Monday I read an article in Astronomy magazine that said I need a solar filter. OK, where do I get one of those for my camcorder at…