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There are several sites are in the running to host Britain’s first ever spaceport, planned to begin operation in 2018

UK spaceport

Rockets carrying satellites into space will soon be taking off from UK soil – perhaps even as early as 2018. Eight sites for a UK spaceport are now being considered by the government for the UK equivalent to NASA’s Cape Canaveral. And it wouldn’t just be satellites.…

four-winged dinosaur provides insight into flight

Newly discovered creature (four-winged dinosaur) would have been a pioneer of air travel

four-winged dinosaur

With no fewer than four wings and extra-long tail feathers, a dinosaur that’s just been discovered in China sheds new light on how they flew. Dubbed changyuraptor, which means ‘long-feathered thief’, it’s thought this beast’s lengthy feathers would have played a crucial role in flight…

HOW MUCH OF A THREAT IS THE EBOLA VIRUS?

This contagious viral disease has been sperading through West Africa, but it’s unlikely to take hold in the UK

ebola virus

On 25 March 2014, the Guinean Ministry of Health sent out a chilling communique: Ebola virus disease was confirmed to have killed 60 people in the country’s southeastern region.

Worse, cases had spread to the capital Conakry, and reports were emerging from the borders of…

There are few frequencies of electromagnetic radiation we haven’t exploited, and some have their dangers…

Radio waves, microwaves, gamma rays… all these waves are made of the same ‘stuff’ – oscillating electric and magnetic fields moving at the speed of light. But that doesn’t mean they’re all alike. The various types of electromagneticwaves have different properties that are determined by their…

Inside an AtomIc Clock

Measuring time using the Earth’s rotation was always an imprecise business – now we do it using the ‘tick’ of an atom (the atomIc clock)!

atomIc clock

Atomic clocks provide timing that is so precise they would lose or gain just one second in 300 million years. It’s safe to say you could set your watch by them.

Knowing the time with such precision is vital to the modern way of life. Atomic clocksa…

Football jerseys with Micro Massage

Puma’s new jersey integrates therapeutic taping (micro massage) into its design

Mario Balotelli

Remember Euro 2012, when Mario Balotelli removed his shirt to celebrate a goal and in the process revealed strange blue strips of material stuck to his back?

Well, therapeutic tape has been used for decades to provide muscle and joint support to athletes who are recovering from strains and injuries.…

Goal Line Technology

When the ball crosses the goal line, a vibration and a visual signal are sent to the officials’ watches.

English football fans will already be familiar with the Goal Line Technology (Hawk-Eye system), which has been adjudicating Premier League goal-line decisions since the start of the 2013-14 season.Hawk-Eye uses technology originally designed for brain surgery and missile…

5 examples of rapid evolution in action

We think of evolution as a slow, gradual process. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes species undergo a rapid transformation

   1 – The moths that got darker… then lighter

moths

The most famous example of ‘microevolution’ – evolutionthat occurs within 100 years and can be observed in a human lifetime – is a phenomenon we call ‘industrial melanism’. This most commonly occurs in butterflies…

The real Lost World

Not far from the Equator and marking the divide between the Amazon Basin and the Orinoco River valley, flat-topped Mount Roraima looks almost like a huge stone block carelessly discarded in the rainforest by a giant bricklayer. First seen by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596, it wasn’t climbed by a Westerner until 1884, when British explorer Everard im Thurn (later to become governor of Fiji) took a…

Quetzalcoatlus is not actually a dinosaur but a pterosaur, or flying reptile. Pterosaurs are distantly related to dinosaurs, and part of a fascinating and diverse group of fliers that waded, climbed, walked, flapped and soared across the Earth throughout the Mesozoic era. Quetzalcoatlus is one of the last and largest of the pterosaurs, and part of a successful family called the azhdarchids.

Quetza…

It was no Edwards Scissorhands, more of a feathered assassin

Therizinosaurus is one of the most remarkable dinosaurs of all time. Discovered in Mongolia during the 1950s and named for its gigantic claws (its name means ‘scythe lizard’), it was originally believed to be a giant, turtle-like quadruped. By the 1980s, additional finds showed that it was actually a long-necked bipedal theropod with…

Imagery of this beast as a plodding, flabby giant are known to be inaccurate

When we picture the sauropod Diplodocus, we think of it as a long-necked animal with a flabby body, a tail that slopes down towards the ground, and a neck maintained in a static, horizontal position. Sauropods like Diplodocushave also been shown with sunken, skeletal faces, their nostrils perched high on the head and in…

Superbly preserved specimens suggest these dinosaurs resembled ostriches.

Ornithomimus is one of the ornithomimids, which is a group of fast, long-necked, toothless, long-legged theropod dinosaurs. Ornithomimids are often called ‘ostrich dinosaurs’ because in proportions and body shape, they must have been like the world’s largest extant bird, albeit with a muscular tail and longer, more robustly…

This dino was one of Jurassic Park’s stars, yet was more chicken-like than reptilian

Most people associate the Cretaceous dinosaur Velociraptor with its appearance in the blockbuster Jurassic Park. In the film, the Velociraptor is a human-sized, scaly uber-predator that is able to open doors with its flexible, down-turned hands. It looks somewhat like a bipedal Komodo dragon. In…

The world’s biggest aircraft (Airlander)

The world’s biggest aircraft is actually a bit of both

it looks much like an airship, with a gas-filled ‘envelope’ on top and a flight deck beneath. But Airlander – officially the world’s largest aircraft – has a clever trick up its sleeve.

While it does owe some of its ability to fly to the huge pockets of helium that make up much of its structure, the shape of its body also generates lift –…