Rain or shine: Watching the weather for 250 years
- 6 June 2019
- From the section Science & Environment
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Ian Curtis, University of Oxford
Come rain or shine, come howling gale or thick fog - Oxford doctoral student Emma Howard must keep her 09:00 appointment. Two hundred and fifty years of history demand it.
Emma is one of the data recorders who manually reads off the weather instruments positioned on the lawn next to the Radcliffe Observatory in Green Templeton College.
If she can't do it, a colleague must.
Temperature on this spot has been measured every single day since Sunday, 14 November 1813, making it the longest, unbroken, single-site time series of its kind in the British Isles, and one of the longest in the world.
"It's fantastic to be involved with the Radcliffe record, but I'm also terrified of something going wrong and messing up this wonderful thing," she says.
Read full article Rain or shine: Watching the weather for 250 years
Indonesia tsunami: How a volcano can be the trigger
- 24 December 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
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Copernicus Data/Sentinel Hub/@HarelDan
Nobody had any clue. There was certainly no warning. It's part of the picture that now suggests a sudden failure in the west-southwest flank of the Anak Krakatau volcano was a significant cause of Saturday's devastating tsunami in the Sunda Strait.
Of course everyone in the region will have been aware of Anak Krakatau, the volcano that emerged in the sea channel just less than 100 years ago. But its rumblings and eruptions have been described by local experts as relatively low-scale and semi-continuous.
Read full article Indonesia tsunami: How a volcano can be the trigger
Climate secrets of the world's most remote island
- 14 December 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
"It's impressive, beautiful and scary as hell to work on."
Welcome to Bouvet Island, a small volcanic rock in the South Atlantic.
Read full article Climate secrets of the world's most remote island
Archaeopteryx: The day the fossil feathers flew
- 25 October 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
There is no greater insult you can hurl at a museum than to suggest its prize fossil is a fake.
But that's what the esteemed astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle did in 1985 when he doubted the authenticity of arguably the most priceless possession in the collections of what is now London's Natural History Museum (NHM). All hell broke loose as the claim made headlines around the world.
Read full article Archaeopteryx: The day the fossil feathers flew
Marvels of the deep and their superpowers
- 4 September 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
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NOAA
Maggie Georgieva is turning a jar of preservative around in her hands. "This is it," she says. "This is 'The Hoff' - the famous yeti crab with a hairy chest," referring to the object suspended in alcohol.
Most of us would be hard pressed to name a recently discovered creature from the deep, and this animal may even be the only one that triggers any sort of recognition.
The 'monster' iceberg: What happened next?
- 9 July 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
It was a wow! moment. The world's biggest berg, a block of ice a quarter the size of Wales, fell off the Antarctic exactly a year ago. But what then? We've gone back to find out.
Weighing a trillion tonnes and covering an area of nearly 6,000 sq km, the colossus dubbed A-68 has kind of spent the past 12 months shuffling on the spot - rather like a driver trying to get themselves out of a tight parking spot at the supermarket.
Read full article The 'monster' iceberg: What happened next?
Animals with 'night vision goggles'
- 18 June 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
A tarsier is known for its big, beady eyes, but it's only when you look at a skull of this diminutive South East Asian primate that you realise just how big they are.
Each one is the same size as its brain. They can't move their eyeballs; if they want to look to the right or left they have to turn their whole head. But the mere fact that tarsiers have these monster organs tells you one thing: vision is very important to them.
Aeolus: Wind satellite weathers technical storm
- 9 June 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
They say there is no gain without pain, but when the European Space Agency (Esa) set out in 2002 to develop its Aeolus satellite, no-one could have imagined the grief the project would bring.
Designed to make the most comprehensive maps of winds across the Earth, the mission missed deadline after deadline as engineers struggled to get its key technology - an ultraviolet laser system - working for long enough to make the venture worth flying.
Read full article Aeolus: Wind satellite weathers technical storm
Rats driven from South Georgia's wildlife paradise
- 9 May 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
They have gone, or so it seems.
The biggest rat eradication programme ever undertaken appears to have rid South Georgia island in the South Atlantic of its pest problem.
Read full article Rats driven from South Georgia's wildlife paradise
Europe's Mars rover takes shape
- 20 April 2018
- From the section Science & Environment
So, here it is. Europe's Mars rover. Or rather, a copy of it.
This is what they call the Structural Thermal Model, or STM. It is one of three rovers that will be built as part of the European Space Agency's ExoMars 2020 mission to search for life on the Red Planet. And, no, we're not sending all three to the Red Planet.
