Follow the Money: The Science of Impact
There is a purely pragmatic issue with targeting the Marsden Fund at economic outcomes: it could hurt more than it helps.
The Coming of the Comet
Comets are not unusual. Dozens of them are found every year and a handful – such as Halley’s Comet – are repeat visitors to our skies. But genuinely bright comets must tread a celestial path that takes them close to both the Sun and the Earth, ensuring that they are simultaneously well-lit and easily seen by humans. These are special events and Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is the brightest we have seen in a decade.
Keep Looking Up
I chalked up a personal first yesterday; I saw an aurora with my own eyes and it was every bit…
A Bigger Sky
Amongst everything else that happened in 2023 a key anniversary for a landmark in our understanding of the Universe passed largely unnoticed – the centenary of the realisation that not only was our Sun one of many stars in the Milky Way galaxy but that our galaxy was one of many galaxies in the Universe.
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
There is insight in the stories that numbers can tell, and for some of us that insight offers a sense of calm in turbulent times. Which may be why In the midst of this year’s rains I started making graphs of the accumulated rainfall and how it stacked up against previous years.
X Marks The Spot
For now I am taking heart from an adage from Usenet days; that the internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it – new social media sites are popping up aiming to catch the flavour of the old Twitter while perhaps avoiding some of its weaknesses.