About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it – 99.9 per cent of the ma...
A. L. Rowse—who, it must be said, never allowed an absence of certainty to get in the way of a conclusion—in 1973 identified the dark lady as Emilia Bassano, daughter of one of the queen’s musicians,...
3.18-million-year-old australopithecine found at Hadar in Ethiopia in 1974 by a team led by Donald Johanson. Formally known as A.L.
1. Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By t...
1 per cent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang.
I would submit that if you think the only people you should have in your country are the people you produce yourselves, you are an idiot.
Not incidentally, lead’s symbol is Pb, for the Latin plumbum, the source word for our modern plumbing.) The Romans also flavored their wine with lead, which may be part of the reason they are not the
We’re going to be in the wilderness in three days. There won’t be doughnut stores.
Unstable plane for a day and a half through storm and cloud and darkness while intricately balancing the flow of fuel through five tanks governed by fourteen valves, and navigating his way across a vo...
The main expressed goal for oceanographers during International Geophysical Year, 1957/8, was to study the use of ocean depths for the dumping of radioactive wastes. This wasn’t a secret assignment, y...
The books tell you that if the grizzly comes for you, on no account should you run. This is the sort of advice you get from someone who is sitting at a keyboard when he gives it. Take it from me, if y...
Space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound.
Significance), 600,000 known archaeological sites (and more being found every day; more being lost, too), 3,500 historic cemeteries, 70,000 war memorials, 4,000 sites of special scientific interest, 1...
Quarks, a collective term that encompasses all particles that are governed by the strong nuclear force.
Person says to you, How do you do? he will be taken aback if you reply, with impeccable logic, How do I do what? The complexities of the English language are
No small achievement when you consider the British climate, the fact that Blackpool is ugly, dirty and a long way from anywhere, that its sea is an open toilet, and its attractions nearly all cheap, p...
Life wants to be; life doesn’t always want to be much; life from time to time goes extinct. To this we may add a fourth: life goes on.
Isotopes and a type of phosphate called apatite, which together provide strong evidence that the rock once contained colonies of living things.
In the words of the physicist Michio Kaku, who goes on: In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and stars is the distortion of space and time. Of
If. Problems often arise in deciding whether if is introducing a subjunctive clause (‘If I were …’) or an indicative one (‘If I was …’). The distinction is straightforward. When if introduces a notion...