A blot on the Sunscape

Mon, 06/06/2011 - 14:51 — Ben Gilliland

See that big orange sphere in the image above? That's the Sun (obviously).

But do you see that tiny black splodge in front of it? It's not the splattered remains of an interstellar Daddy Longlegs, it's actually the International Space Station as photographed from the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Where I pucker up and blow my own trumpet

Sun, 06/05/2011 - 16:18 — Ben Gilliland

Cosm nominated for a Sir Arthur Clarke award

I am most pleased (and a more than a little humbled) to have been shortlisted for a Sir Arthur Clarke award.

I have (somehow) made it into the final three for the Sir Arthur Clarke Achievement in Space Media Award. This is where people normally gush about how 'just being nominated is an honour', but in this case, it is the truth. The 'Arthurs' (as they are known) have been dubbed the space industy's 'Oscar's', but what makes them very special indeed is that nominees are put forward by the public.

A glimpse of the (almost) impossible...

Sun, 06/05/2011 - 15:44 — Ben Gilliland

Has science found its first white hole?

The universe is littered with the weird and wonderful and GRB 060614 could turn out to be one of the weirdest and most wonderful of them all.
GRB 060614, which we’ll call Ralph to smooth things along, was a gamma-ray burst with some very puzzling properties detected by Nasa’s Swift satellite on June 14, 2006.

Fancy designing your own space experiment?

Sun, 05/22/2011 - 16:10 — Ben Gilliland

Exciting new summer school opens space science to the public

(And Cosm has two scholarships up for grabs)

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is an impressive bit of kit (find out about it here) but most of the experiments carried out on the International Space Station are a little more modest.

Even so, getting even a small experiment up to the ISS’s altitude of 300km (186 miles) is no easy task. After all, it costs more than £3,000 just to carry a single kilogram into Earth orbit. Then there is the competition. Space (no pun intended) is limited inside the station, so they have to be selective about what they let aboard.

But imagine if you were given the chance to design an experiment that actually made it to the ISS… it could kickstart a career, or it might help turn your degree into a doctorate.

Meet the ultimate space experiment

Sun, 05/22/2011 - 15:28 — Ben Gilliland

Searching cosmic rays for the secrets of the universe

A titan has just been installed on the International Space Station. Weighing in at seven tonnes, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) took 16 years to build and is the most complex space physics experiment ever built. Launched last week as the final payload of Nasa’s retiring space shuttle Endeavour, AMS-02 was successfully bolted on to the ISS on Thursday.

It is a huge scientific collaboration involving 600 physicists from around the world. Led by Nobel prize winner Prof Samuel Ting, it has the world of physics in a state of fevered excitement (we leave it to you to imagine a fevered physicist).

The measures of man

Fri, 05/20/2011 - 08:10 — Ben Gilliland

Celebrate World Measurement Day

Today is World Metrology Day. It marks the anniversary of the signing of the Convention de Metre in 1875, which provided the basis for a single, coherent system of measurements. But why should you care?

Well, without what is known as the International System of Units (SI units), we would have no agreed standard with which to measure the world around us.

It guarantees that a kiliogram weighs a kilogram the world over. It ensures that, if you travel a kilometre away from home, you know exactly how far you have travelled, and that if you arrange to have dinner with the wife at six o clock, you won't find it already in the dog.