CosmOnline | The online manifestation of MetroCosm

Cosm: The merchandise

Tue, 03/26/2013 - 13:59 — Ben Gilliland

I have been inundated recently with literally ones of requests for Cosm-themed t-shirts. Not being one to ignore the needs of the masses, I have crafted a small selection of science-themed t-shirts that are ideal for the geek in your life.

There's only six designs at the moment, but I'm sure more will crop up eventually. If you like one, buy one (if you like two, buy two)... and so on. Have a look and then head over to the website and spend your heating money on a t-shirt or a hoodie (they are much better value for money than gas).

Our weird, wonderful, (almost) perfect Universe

Mon, 03/25/2013 - 08:10 — Ben Gilliland

The Cosmic Microwave Background as seen by the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope. The map shows tiny deviations from the average background temperature that represent the seeds from which galaxies grew (ESA/Planck Collaboration). Click here to see a supersize version.

A SPACECRAFT, which has been quietly mapping the oldest light in the cosmos, has revealed an ‘almost perfect Universe’ that confirms that much of what we thought about its earliest moments.

The map, created by the European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope, shows the first light released by the infant Universe. Called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the map reveals the foundations on which the Universe as we know it today was built.

Planck is the latest satellite to study the faint signal of the CMB and is by far the most sensitive. The map’s mottled temperature patterns fit almost perfectly with our current best model of the Universe’s origins.

The craft has also made the most accurate measurement of the rate of the Universe’s expansion – pushing the date of its birth back from 13.73billion years to 13.81billion years. It has also refined measurements of the what the cosmos is made of – there is a little more matter and little less ‘dark energy’, the mysterious agent thought to be driving the Universe apart at an ever-increasing rate.

Celebrate Great British innovations

Sun, 03/17/2013 - 11:03 — Ben Gilliland

IN THE DIM AND DISTANT PAST (well, before we lost our Empire) Britain led the world in science and engineering. We invented the reflecting telescope, the steam engine, the glider, electric motor, the railway, the telephone, the steam turbine, the toothbrush... the list goes on. But in the last century, we Britons have rather let ourselves go – education isn’t what it used to be; our manufacturing industry has gone all Dodo on us; and we lost the ability to innovate.

But the thing is – we really didn’t. We might have lost our some of our sense of superiority, but we are still world leaders in science and engineering. To celebrate (and remind us) of this, the Science Museum (big list coming up), the GREAT Britain campaign, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society, British Science Association, department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Engineering UK (told you) are inviting you to vote for the best British innovation of the last hundred years.

If you think the list might make for slim pickings, think again. Penicillin, TV, computing, the jet engine, the structure of DNA, DNA sequencing, Concorde, Cat’s eyes, the atomic clock and plate tectonics are just a few of the World-changing innovations on the list.

Know thy enemy (and ask it politely to go away)

Wed, 03/06/2013 - 15:16 — Ben Gilliland

Above: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx will launch in 2016 with the goal of studying asteroid 1999 RQ36 and collecting a sample for return to Earth by 2023.
(Spacecraft image: NASA, Earth and asteroid image: ESA)

GENERALS HAVE KNOWN for millennia that to prevail in battle, you must study your enemy – as the great military tactician, Sun Tzu, wrote in the 6th century BC: ‘...know thy enemy and know thy self, you can win a hundred battles’. It is a lesson put to use on battlefields all over the world, but now it’s time to move the lesson to a larger field of battle: space itself.

As the recent events in Russia dramatically reminded us – the pale blue dot we call Earth is really rather small and vulnerable. The meteor that exploded over the Russian region of Chelyabinsk Oblast, injured some 1,500 people and damaged more than 4,300 buildings across six cities. The damage was impressive, but more impressive was the size of the offending space rock – it measured a mere 30 metres across – a speck of dust compared to some of the asteroids hoofing about in the space above our heads.

So what can we do to prevent this happening again? Well, in the case of the Russian meteor, probably not much – it was just too small to spot before it entered the atmosphere – but we might be able to do something about the larger rocks that we can detect.

Getting to the heart of matter

Mon, 03/04/2013 - 09:47 — Ben Gilliland

One hundred years ago this week, a Danish physicist (and former footballer), Neils Bohr, wrote a letter to his mentor (the famed physicist Ernest Rutherford) in which he described a new model for the make-up of the atom. It brought the new science of quantum mechanics into the equation and was the first step in revealing the atom to be far weirder than anyone had ever imagined...

THE STORY OF THE ATOM begins in the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece. A chiton-clad thinker called Democritus formulated the idea that matter might be comprised of tiny particles that were ‘atomos’, or indivisible. These ‘atoms’ couldn’t be broken up as there was nothing smaller for them to be broken into.

Then, for more than 2,000 years, not a lot happened in the world of atomic science. Finally, in the early 19th century, an English physicist and chemist called John Dalton formulated his own ‘atomic theory’.

Dalton’s atom was much the same as the ancient Greeks’ but he went on to suggest the different elements were made of atoms of different sizes and that the elements could be combined to create more complex compounds. He was also the first person to make a serious attempt to calculate the atomic mass of some of the chemical elements and to introduce a system of chemical symbols.

Seeking the dark side of the Universe

Sun, 02/24/2013 - 20:20 — Ben Gilliland

THE history of mankind’s relationship with the cosmos has been one of repeated revelations that our place within it is far smaller than we had believed.

Once we thought that the Earth was centre of all and the universe was little more than window dressing for the night sky.

Then astronomers found our planet to be one lump of rock orbiting a Sun that is one star among many hundreds of billions in an unremarkable galaxy, which is itself among countless billions.

In a historical heartbeat we went from being the kings of a palatial universe built just for us to an invisible smudge on a speck of matter, orbiting a mote of incandescent dust, caught in a swirling eddy, lost in the dark ocean of the cosmos.

Then, just as it appeared we had found our – albeit reduced – place in the universe, astronomers realised the way it was behaving didn’t tally with everything we knew to be in it... something was missing. So they took measurements, made calculations and concluded that more than 96 per cent of the matter and energy in the universe was missing (well, it wasn’t missing – it was definitely there, we just couldn’t see it).

Humanity’s slide down the greasy pole of significance was complete – a smudge on a speck orbiting a mote of glowing dust in a galaxy afloat in a vast ocean that makes up just four per cent of the universe.

Yet, rather than damaging our resolve, each revelation of the vastness of the cosmos has fuelled our need to better understand it. Now the hunt is on to find the missing portion of the universe...