Category: Technology

On the face of it, competitive distance running appears not to have changed much since the Olympic Games were revived in 1896. However, even the relative simplicity of racing from gun to tape has radically altered in recent years due to the rise of advanced running footwear known colloquially as “supershoes”. A few years ago, […]

Chinstrap penguins are members of Antarctica’s brush-tailed group of penguins. They’re easily identified by the feature that gives them their name – a black strap that runs from ear to ear below the chin. The species is found mostly in the Western Antarctic Peninsula region, on far-flung isles such as the South Shetland Islands, the […]

For the past few weeks, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) after the first crewed voyage of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft hit a snag. Concerns raised by Boeing and Nasa over thruster problems and several helium leaks (helium is used in Starliner’s engine system) have […]

UK start-up Oxford Dynamics has won a £1 million contract with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to develop advanced robots for environmental remediation and recovery following chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents. Located at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, this pioneering start-up is developing an advanced mobile AI robot […]

One hundred years ago the discovery of a skull in South Africa’s North West province altered our understanding of human evolution. The juvenile skull was dubbed the Taung Child by Raymond Dart, an anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand, who first described it. In 1924 Dart could not say exactly how old it was, […]

Around 5,200 years ago, plague was not just present but common in six generations of one Swedish family, according to a new study. The researchers analysed both the ancient DNA of these people’s skeletal remains and the pathogens that left traces in them. Three different strains of plague were present, of which the latest was […]

Professor Dumas will also take over as head of the STFC Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE) site where the UK ATC is based, alongside The University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Astronomy. Wealth of experience Professor Dumas has a strong background in managing large, complex astronomy projects. He previously served as the Head of Operations and an […]

The size of the solar system is defined by the volume of space over which the Sun’s influence exceeds those of other nearby stars in the Milky Way galaxy. This influence derives from two fundamental forces of nature: gravity and magnetism. Let’s tackle gravity first. Every object in the solar system experiences a gravitational pull […]

NASA is primarily known in Israel as the American space agency, the elite team of test pilots and brilliant engineers who managed to land on the moon, develop the space shuttle, and land research spacecraft on Mars. These are the people who defeated the Soviet Union in the most expensive race in human history. However, […]