Archive for the ‘Science & technology’ Category
Word of the day: aphelion
July 5th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This is the point at which the Earth is furthest from the sun. It occurs because the earth’s orbit is not circular but mildly elliptical. The precise moment of its occurrence this year is 23.27 BST today 5 July. At this point, we will be 5M kilometres further from the sun than in early January […]
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How many men have walked on the Moon and how many of them are still alive?
June 8th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
In July 1969, the first men walked on the Moon and I watched it live on television. The previous year, the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” was released which portrayed a community on the Moon at the turn of the century. At that time, we assumed that there would be a growing programme of lunar […]
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How does the death toll from Covid-19 compare with that for the Spanish flu?
May 27th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I did an earlier posting comparing the current coronavirus pandemic with the so-called Spanish flu. We don’t know the death toll from the Spanish flu. It is usually estimated as between 20 – 50 million, but the lowest estimate is 17 million and the highest is 100 million. The current pandemic is far from over, […]
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How many people die from HIV/AIDS?
May 27th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
As we begin to see a way of eventually eliminating Covid-19 when the global death toll is around 3.5M and still rising, we should remember that HIV/AIDS is still a global killer and so far we do have a vaccine for it. Around 700,00 people die from HIV/AIDS each year; in some countries it is the leading […]
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How long have we been here?
May 12th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
By ‘we’, I mean humankind. By ‘here’, I mean the universe. Consider these amazing facts: The universe is 13.8 billion years old. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Humankind has been around for about 200,000 years. So the universe is around 70,000 times older than humans. If the age of the universe was represented […]
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Word of the day: synesthesia
April 23rd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Synesthesia is an anomalous blending of the senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality. Synesthetes hear colours, feel sounds and taste shapes. What makes synesthesia different from drug-induced hallucinations is that synesthetic sensations are highly consistent: for particular synesthetes, the note F is always a reddish shade of rust, […]
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Has physics found a fifth force?
April 8th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
In physics today, there is something called “the core theory” which asserts that everything consists of particles (such as electrons, protons and neutrons) and forces (namely, the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity) that arise out of fields (such as the Higgs field). Now, for decades, scientists have sought to reconcile the general […]
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How does the current global pandemic compare with the influenza pandemic of 1918?
March 30th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The influenza pandemic is usually called the Spanish flu. However, it was only called that because it came to the attention of the media more in Spain since this country was neutral and had a freer media than the Great War combatant nations of Britain, France and Germany where the flu was initially prevalent. We […]
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How should we test for coronavirus?
February 24th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
There are two tests to determine whether someone has coronavirus (and one – a blood test – to establish whether someone has actually had the virus). The first test for the virus is called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This involves swabbing the back of the throat and the nostrils. The swab has to be sent to […]
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Ever heard of the Schumann resonances?
February 5th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
No, neither had I – until today. A friend of mine, who is very spiritual, explained that her troubled week might be related to a high value of the Schumann resonances. As a sceptic, I am profoundly doubtful about all spiritual phenomena or explanations, but I was assured that Schumann resonances are a real thing. […]
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