Archive for December, 2009


How old is the universe?

December 23rd, 2009 by Roger Darlington

I’m reading a fascinating book of cosmology called “You Are Here” and written by Christopher Potter. It raises some challenging topics. For instance, how old is the universe? Actually we have a reliable and precise answer to this question. It is 13.73 billion years, plus or minus 120 million years.

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What is gravity?

December 23rd, 2009 by Roger Darlington

I’m reading a fascinating book of cosmology called “You Are Here” and written by Christopher Potter. It raises some challenging topics. For example, what is gravity? Potter quotes John Wheeler as explaining: “Matter tells space how to curve and space tells matter how to move”. But he also quotes Michio Kaku as arguing: “In some […]

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New CEO for Consumer Focus

December 22nd, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Consumer Focus – on whose Board I sit – has just announced the appointment of a new Chief Executive. He is Michael O’Connor. Details here.

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Our Christmas traditions

December 22nd, 2009 by Roger Darlington

The origin of many of our Christmas traditions is helpfully explained in this article.

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How many stars are there?

December 21st, 2009 by Roger Darlington

At the moment, I’m reading a fascinating book of cosmology called “You Are Here” and written by Christopher Potter. It’s full of intriguing facts. Potter takes the reader on a tour of the universe in 26 degrees of separation starting with the range 1-10 metres (10 to the power of 0 to 10 to the […]

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Did the Nazis have a stealth bomber?

December 20th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Two of my many interests are aviation and history, so I was drawn to a recent television programme about an aircraft developed in Nazi German called the Horten 229. This ‘bat wing’ aircraft utilised amazingly advanced design and technology which effectively made it the world’s first stealth aircraft. As the war was ending, American troops […]

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Two Cinderella stories

December 19th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

This year, I’ve read a lot of short stories and I’ve written quite a number. In today’s “Guardian”, Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel contributes a short story on the Cinderella theme called “Cinderella In Autumn”. Actually one of my own recent short stories was a reworking of the Cinderella tale called “Cinderella Rebooted”. Compare and […]

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How many satellites are there?

December 19th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

At the moment, I’m reading a fascinating book of cosmology called “You Are Here” and written by Christopher Potter. It’s full of intriguing facts. For instance, how many satellites do you think there are orbiting the Earth? According to Potter, there are 417 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites (160-2,000 kilometres above the earth), 47 Medium […]

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Have we found dark matter?

December 18th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Dark matter is odd stuff – it may constitute some three-quarters of the universe but we’re not even sure if it exists. First postulated by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in 1933, according to this article we might have found some dark matter at last. But only two particles have been spotted and there’s a one […]

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A white London

December 17th, 2009 by Roger Darlington

Here in London, we’ve had snow flurries over the last few days but this evening we’ve had a proper fall of the white stuff. I can’t remember when we last had snow before Christmas. It looks pretty but I’m glad that I don’t have to go to work in it.

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