Technology, Science and the Environment.

[The Bear]

2 hours ago, CornwallFox said:

Such a f**king moron. 

[FoxesDeb]

4 hours ago, The Bear said:

Such a f**king moron. 

At this point I feel like DT should have his own unique derogatory term. Lumping him in with your average moron seems a bit unfair to them. Same with any other insulting names we could call him really, deranged lunatics are probably saner than he is so although this is my preferred term for him, it doesn't seem to cut it any more, he's off the scale.

[Trav Le Bleu]

3 hours ago, FoxesDeb said:

At this point I feel like DT should have his own unique derogatory term. Lumping him in with your average moron seems a bit unfair to them. Same with any other insulting names we could call him really, deranged lunatics are probably saner than he is so although this is my preferred term for him, it doesn't seem to cut it any more, he's off the scale.

Don means father in the Catholic church and Trump means fart, so how about...

 

Daddy Fart?

Edited 29 April by Trav Le Bleu

[davieG]

Greenpeace UK  ·

Follow

 

 

Brilliant ⁠

⁠

The clean energy isn't just a possibility, it's already here. We urgently need the government to double down on renewables to lower our bills and protect our planet. Sign the urgent petition demanding the government invests in homegrown renewable energy https://act.gp/4n1bZwo

[davieG]

Over 850 tonnes of food waste collected in month
A view of food waste in a dedicated bin, with leftover bread and salad visible.
Image source,Paul Moseley/BBC
Image caption,
Food waste sent to standard landfill releases greenhouse gases

ByBen Mellor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e8lg1ye30o

 

Leicester
Published
36 minutes ago
Councils that started food waste collections in Leicestershire and Rutland have collected a total of 869 tonnes of food waste in roughly one month.

Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, Blaby District Council, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council and Rutland County Council (RCC) started collections in either March or April.

The government set a deadline of 31 March for all homes in England to get weekly food waste collections, but many local authorities missed this, including Leicester City Council who expect to start their services after May 2028.

Councillor Oliver Hemsley, RCC's cabinet member for environment and transport, said he was "quite surprised" by how much food waste was collected.

A view of a Rutland County Council food waste recycling truck.
Image source,Rutland County Council
Image caption,
Hemsley said teething issues with collections were being ironed out

"Anytime you change things for people, we tend to be quite conservative about stuff, but it's actually really good to see that it's being embraced by the Rutland residents," Hemsley said.

He added that the food waste collections also worked better with modern habits.

"We've known lots of things over time. We used to compost our potato peelings and things, but it's become less easy for people to do that.

"Offering this service, rather than just chucking it in the black bin, has allowed us to meet the needs of our community and do something for the future generations."

Where does the waste go?
Food waste sent to landfill, along with general waste, "doesn't just harmlessly break down" according to guidance issued by a number of local authorities.

"It has a big impact on the environment as it rots and releases methane - a harmful greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide."

Instead, food waste collected by these collections is turned into energy.

Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, Blaby District Council, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, and Rutland County Council all send their waste to anaerobic digestion plants.

"It's a process where they feed it in, and it generates a gas which is used to generate energy," Hemsley said.

"It is probably going to generate savings [for Rutland County Council] of around £253,000 in the first year.

"So it's well worth having and helps offset the costs of having it put in in the first place."

Who collected how much?
According to the latest data provided to the BBC:

Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council collected 262 tonnes between 1 April and 24 April

Blaby District Council collected 256.86 tonnes between 30 March and 28 April

Oadby and Wigston Borough Council collected 173 tonnes in total as of 30 April

Rutland County Council collected 176.88 tonnes in total as of 27 April

Charnwood Borough Council, Harborough District Council, and North West Leicestershire District Council are expected to start collections later this year.

Melton Borough Council said it would start in April 2028, while Leicester City Council said it would start "after" May 2028.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1m253033m4o

 

A massive 'megatsunami' wave created when part of an Alaskan mountain crumbled into the sea is the second tallest ever recorded – and a reminder of the risks posed by melting glaciers, say scientists.

Last summer a giant wave swept through a remote fjord in southeast Alaska leaving destruction in its wake.

The event went largely unreported at the time, but a new scientific analysis shows it was caused by a massive landslide.

An incredible 64 million cubic metres of rock – the equivalent of 24 Great Pyramids - splashed into the water below. The sheer power of that amount of rock plunging into the fjord in under a minute created a gigantic wave almost 500 metres tall.

 

A little glimpse of how devastating the natural world can be with just a (relatively) tiny shift - thankfully out enough in the middle of nowhere that no one was hurt.

[leicsmac]

And now, for something so unbelievably inaccurate it joins Flat Earth et al as actually being hilarious:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SpacedX]

Starship V3 poised for another launch attempt billed as make or break for SpaceX.  They've lengthened both the upper stage and the Super Heavy booster of Starship Version 3 in order to expand fuel capacity, improve payload capacity, and upgraded its propulsion system with Raptor 3 engines. New launch pad too. 

[leicsmac]

5 hours ago, SpacedX said:

Starship V3 poised for another launch attempt billed as make or break for SpaceX.  They've lengthened both the upper stage and the Super Heavy booster of Starship Version 3 in order to expand fuel capacity, improve payload capacity, and upgraded its propulsion system with Raptor 3 engines. New launch pad too. 

Cleared the tower and away, stage sep also good but some issues with engines on both booster and craft.

[leicsmac]

So it looks like a large part of Texas is struggling with a parasitic worm called screw worm affecting their livestock. 

 

This is after government cuts to scientific agencies researching how best to keep it away, and total ignorance towards the warming natural world which allows this parasite to flourish in more places. 

 

Sometimes the Earth and its consequences comes at you fast. 

[The Bear]

Screw Worm is a good name for Trump. 

[leicsmac]

On the topic of how the natural works comes at you fast, a fun fact:

 

Mosquito-borne disease has killed around half of the humans ever to inhabit this earth, from the beginning of recorded history to today. 

[TheLittleBigMan]

On 29/04/2026 at 02:41, FoxesDeb said:

At this point I feel like DT should have his own unique derogatory term. Lumping him in with your average moron seems a bit unfair to them. Same with any other insulting names we could call him really, deranged lunatics are probably saner than he is so although this is my preferred term for him, it doesn't seem to cut it any more, he's off the scale.

I call him "The orange man baby". 

[leicsmac]

Some good news:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c621z28z138o

 

Children vaccinated at age 12–13 against HPV (human papillomavirus) have close to zero risk of dying from cervical cancer before the age of 30, landmark new research reveals.

The first study of its kind, external shows deaths have fallen sharply since school-age girls began being offered it in 2008, and around 200 lives have been saved in England so far thanks to the vaccine.

Between 2020 and 2024, no cervical cancer deaths were recorded in women aged 20 to 24 - the first time that had happened over a five-year period.

 

Not bad for a vaccine some leading lights in other nations decry as "entirely unsafe".

 

 

[davieG]

Some Amazing Facts ·

Follow

 

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 with a simple mission — fly past Jupiter and Saturn, send back some photos, and that would be it.

Nobody told it to stop.

On November 18, 2026, this spacecraft will hit a milestone no human-made object has ever reached in the entire history of our species. It will be exactly one light-day from Earth — 16 billion miles away. So far that a radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, takes a full 24 hours just to reach it. If NASA sends a "good morning" on Monday, Voyager won't hear it until Tuesday. And NASA won't get the reply until Wednesday.

Think about that. A two-day conversation. With a machine we built in the 1970s.

Here's what makes this even more remarkable. Voyager 1 is dying. NASA shut down one of its last remaining science instruments just this April — a sensor that had been running nonstop since the day it launched, nearly half a century ago. The spacecraft now runs on roughly the power of a dim light bulb. Engineers are attempting a last-resort fix they've nicknamed "the Big Bang" — a risky all-at-once overhaul — just to keep it alive long enough to see its 50th birthday in 2027.

And still it flies. At 38,000 miles per hour, deeper into interstellar space, with no destination and no plans to return.

Here is the number that should stop you cold. Voyager 1 has spent 49 years traveling one light-day. The nearest star to our Sun is 4.2 light-years away. That means after nearly five decades of non-stop travel, Voyager has covered just 0.0027% of the distance to our closest stellar neighbor.

Space is not big. Big is not even the right word.

Strapped to its side is a golden record — a disc containing music, greetings in 55 languages, and the sounds of Earth — placed there by Carl Sagan, just in case someone out there ever finds it, millions or billions of years from now.

The loneliest object humanity has ever created, carrying the best of what we are, sailing into a silence we will never hear the end of.

The Ghost Flight of Helios 522: A Chilling Sky Mystery.

https://epiola.com/the-day-a-plane-became-a-ghost/

 

 

 

[Trav Le Bleu]

Musk will love this.

 

 

[leicsmac]

https://spacenews.com/chinese-spaceplane-releases-object-into-orbit-according-to-commercial-space-surveillance/

 

Both big spacefaring nations going on with their TSTO (two stage to orbit) reusable spaceplane plans, then. Didn't know either of them were that far along the development course. 

[davieG]

TechVerse ·

Follow

 

 

 

The Netherlands figured out that a million parked electric cars are actually a million live grid batteries — sitting idle in driveways the entire time. Dutch grid operator TenneT has partnered with major automakers and charging infrastructure providers to deploy vehicle-to-grid technology at national scale, turning every plugged-in electric vehicle into a bidirectional battery connected directly to the country's power grid. Dutch EV owners are now simultaneously keeping their cars charged and stabilizing national electricity demand without lifting a finger.

The mathematics behind why this matters are straightforward. The average car spends roughly 95 percent of its time parked and completely idle. A modern EV battery holds between 60 and 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Multiply that idle storage capacity across one million vehicles, and the Netherlands is sitting on tens of gigawatt-hours of flexible, distributed grid storage that is already paid for, already deployed, and already connected to the grid. Operators can pull from this storage during peak demand or renewable generation shortfalls, then recharge the vehicles overnight when electricity is cheapest and cleanest, all without any disruption to the driver's daily schedule.

EV owners participating in the Dutch program are compensated in real cash for the electricity their cars push back to the grid, in many cases earning enough to offset a meaningful share of their annual charging costs entirely. As EV adoption accelerates globally, the Netherlands has demonstrated something remarkable: the storage infrastructure for the clean energy transition builds itself automatically, every single time someone buys a car.

Source: TenneT Netherlands Grid Report, 2024

[Grebfromgrebland]

18 hours ago, davieG said:

TechVerse ·

Follow

 

 

 

The Netherlands figured out that a million parked electric cars are actually a million live grid batteries — sitting idle in driveways the entire time. Dutch grid operator TenneT has partnered with major automakers and charging infrastructure providers to deploy vehicle-to-grid technology at national scale, turning every plugged-in electric vehicle into a bidirectional battery connected directly to the country's power grid. Dutch EV owners are now simultaneously keeping their cars charged and stabilizing national electricity demand without lifting a finger.

The mathematics behind why this matters are straightforward. The average car spends roughly 95 percent of its time parked and completely idle. A modern EV battery holds between 60 and 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Multiply that idle storage capacity across one million vehicles, and the Netherlands is sitting on tens of gigawatt-hours of flexible, distributed grid storage that is already paid for, already deployed, and already connected to the grid. Operators can pull from this storage during peak demand or renewable generation shortfalls, then recharge the vehicles overnight when electricity is cheapest and cleanest, all without any disruption to the driver's daily schedule.

EV owners participating in the Dutch program are compensated in real cash for the electricity their cars push back to the grid, in many cases earning enough to offset a meaningful share of their annual charging costs entirely. As EV adoption accelerates globally, the Netherlands has demonstrated something remarkable: the storage infrastructure for the clean energy transition builds itself automatically, every single time someone buys a car.

Source: TenneT Netherlands Grid Report, 2024

The UK is years behind on this. I think there's only on V2H charger in the UK market and no one stocks or installs it.

 

 

[SpacedX]

On 22/06/2026 at 19:29, davieG said:

Some Amazing Facts ·

Follow

 

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 with a simple mission — fly past Jupiter and Saturn, send back some photos, and that would be it.

Nobody told it to stop.

On November 18, 2026, this spacecraft will hit a milestone no human-made object has ever reached in the entire history of our species. It will be exactly one light-day from Earth — 16 billion miles away. So far that a radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, takes a full 24 hours just to reach it. If NASA sends a "good morning" on Monday, Voyager won't hear it until Tuesday. And NASA won't get the reply until Wednesday.

Think about that. A two-day conversation. With a machine we built in the 1970s.

Here's what makes this even more remarkable. Voyager 1 is dying. NASA shut down one of its last remaining science instruments just this April — a sensor that had been running nonstop since the day it launched, nearly half a century ago. The spacecraft now runs on roughly the power of a dim light bulb. Engineers are attempting a last-resort fix they've nicknamed "the Big Bang" — a risky all-at-once overhaul — just to keep it alive long enough to see its 50th birthday in 2027.

And still it flies. At 38,000 miles per hour, deeper into interstellar space, with no destination and no plans to return.

Here is the number that should stop you cold. Voyager 1 has spent 49 years traveling one light-day. The nearest star to our Sun is 4.2 light-years away. That means after nearly five decades of non-stop travel, Voyager has covered just 0.0027% of the distance to our closest stellar neighbor.

Space is not big. Big is not even the right word.

Strapped to its side is a golden record — a disc containing music, greetings in 55 languages, and the sounds of Earth — placed there by Carl Sagan, just in case someone out there ever finds it, millions or billions of years from now.

The loneliest object humanity has ever created, carrying the best of what we are, sailing into a silence we will never hear the end of.

The Ghost Flight of Helios 522: A Chilling Sky Mystery.

https://epiola.com/the-day-a-plane-became-a-ghost/

 

 

 

Also, Voyager 1 and 2 have about 3 million times less memory than a modern mobile phone and transmit data at a glacial pace compared to modern connections. Incredibly, NASA engineers were able to send software patches and troubleshoot these 1970s machines from over 13 and 15 billion miles away. The Voyager Probes rely on decaying plutonium in their Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators.  Because they lose about 4 watts of power every year, mission controllers continually shut down non-essential systems and instruments to keep the spacecraft flying and communicating. The Voyager's radio transmitters broadcast with about 20 to 23 watts of power, which is almost exactly the same amount of electricity required to illuminate the bulb in your refrigerator. By the time that signal crosses the solar system to reach Earth and is received by the Deep Space Network, it arrives at a fraction of a billion-trillionth of a watt. 

 

Currently, Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth while Voyager 2 is around 13 billion miles away. Signals weaken significantly over vast cosmic distances (inverse square law). but our radio telescopes are nonetheless capable of detecting emissions from distant pulsars. The furthest individual pulsar from which we have received a signal is NGC 5907 X-1, located about 50 million light-years from Earth in the galaxy NGC 5907.

 

It will take the Voyager probes approximately 300 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and about 30,000 years to fly completely beyond it. Only then, having cleared this massive icy shell will they leave the Sun’s gravitational dominance behind and enter the true void between star systems, interstellar space. In 1 million years, they will be roughly 45 to 50 light-years away from Earth, but only a fraction of the way across our galaxy, In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years of the red dwarf star Gliese 445.

It would take roughly 500 million to 2.5 billion years to complete a full orbit around the Milky Way which they can never leave since they don't have the energy to overcome the gravitational influence. 

 

This is a really good demonstration of the scale involved just to depart the solar system:

 

 

What I find so fascinating is that although they are in their dying ebbs of life, they are still making discoveries. hey both hit the "wall of fire" - the heliopause, at the boundaries of our home system, measuring temperatures of 30,000-50,000 kelvin (54,000-90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on their passage through it. This "firewall" isn't a solid physical barrier it is a superheated, dense sea of highly energetic particles created by the compression of the solar wind slamming into interstellar space - obviously too sparse to transfer that heat and damage the probes due to the vacuum of space. Apparently, the probes discovered that the magnetic fields just outside the solar system run almost parallel to the ones inside the heliosphere. This challenges previous models and suggests a much smoother blending of solar and galactic environments than scientists originally expected. Think about that...two probes, designed and launched in the 1970s now tell us this. That's wonderful. 

[leicsmac]

32 minutes ago, SpacedX said:

Also, Voyager 1 and 2 have about 3 million times less memory than a modern mobile phone and transmit data at a glacial pace compared to modern connections. Incredibly, NASA engineers were able to send software patches and troubleshoot these 1970s machines from over 13 and 15 billion miles away. The Voyager Probes rely on decaying plutonium in their Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators.  Because they lose about 4 watts of power every year, mission controllers continually shut down non-essential systems and instruments to keep the spacecraft flying and communicating. The Voyager's radio transmitters broadcast with about 20 to 23 watts of power, which is almost exactly the same amount of electricity required to illuminate the bulb in your refrigerator. By the time that signal crosses the solar system to reach Earth and is received by the Deep Space Network, it arrives at a fraction of a billion-trillionth of a watt. 

 

Currently, Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth while Voyager 2 is around 13 billion miles away. Signals weaken significantly over vast cosmic distances (inverse square law). but our radio telescopes are nonetheless capable of detecting emissions from distant pulsars. The furthest individual pulsar from which we have received a signal is NGC 5907 X-1, located about 50 million light-years from Earth in the galaxy NGC 5907.

 

It will take the Voyager probes approximately 300 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and about 30,000 years to fly completely beyond it. Only then, having cleared this massive icy shell will they leave the Sun’s gravitational dominance behind and enter the true void between star systems, interstellar space. In 1 million years, they will be roughly 45 to 50 light-years away from Earth, but only a fraction of the way across our galaxy, In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years of the red dwarf star Gliese 445.

It would take roughly 500 million to 2.5 billion years to complete a full orbit around the Milky Way which they can never leave since they don't have the energy to overcome the gravitational influence. 

 

This is a really good demonstration of the scale involved just to depart the solar system:

 

 

What I find so fascinating is that although they are in their dying ebbs of life, they are still making discoveries. hey both hit the "wall of fire" - the heliopause, at the boundaries of our home system, measuring temperatures of 30,000-50,000 kelvin (54,000-90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on their passage through it. This "firewall" isn't a solid physical barrier it is a superheated, dense sea of highly energetic particles created by the compression of the solar wind slamming into interstellar space - obviously too sparse to transfer that heat and damage the probes due to the vacuum of space. Apparently, the probes discovered that the magnetic fields just outside the solar system run almost parallel to the ones inside the heliosphere. This challenges previous models and suggests a much smoother blending of solar and galactic environments than scientists originally expected. Think about that...two probes, designed and launched in the 1970s now tell us this. That's wonderful. 

Terrestrial perspective, and just what our position in our vast visible universe is, is something I wish that more people truly grasped. 

[ian__marshall]

1 hour ago, SpacedX said:

Also, Voyager 1 and 2 have about 3 million times less memory than a modern mobile phone and transmit data at a glacial pace compared to modern connections. Incredibly, NASA engineers were able to send software patches and troubleshoot these 1970s machines from over 13 and 15 billion miles away. The Voyager Probes rely on decaying plutonium in their Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators.  Because they lose about 4 watts of power every year, mission controllers continually shut down non-essential systems and instruments to keep the spacecraft flying and communicating. The Voyager's radio transmitters broadcast with about 20 to 23 watts of power, which is almost exactly the same amount of electricity required to illuminate the bulb in your refrigerator. By the time that signal crosses the solar system to reach Earth and is received by the Deep Space Network, it arrives at a fraction of a billion-trillionth of a watt. 

 

Currently, Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth while Voyager 2 is around 13 billion miles away. Signals weaken significantly over vast cosmic distances (inverse square law). but our radio telescopes are nonetheless capable of detecting emissions from distant pulsars. The furthest individual pulsar from which we have received a signal is NGC 5907 X-1, located about 50 million light-years from Earth in the galaxy NGC 5907.

 

It will take the Voyager probes approximately 300 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and about 30,000 years to fly completely beyond it. Only then, having cleared this massive icy shell will they leave the Sun’s gravitational dominance behind and enter the true void between star systems, interstellar space. In 1 million years, they will be roughly 45 to 50 light-years away from Earth, but only a fraction of the way across our galaxy, In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years of the red dwarf star Gliese 445.

It would take roughly 500 million to 2.5 billion years to complete a full orbit around the Milky Way which they can never leave since they don't have the energy to overcome the gravitational influence. 

 

This is a really good demonstration of the scale involved just to depart the solar system:

 

 

What I find so fascinating is that although they are in their dying ebbs of life, they are still making discoveries. hey both hit the "wall of fire" - the heliopause, at the boundaries of our home system, measuring temperatures of 30,000-50,000 kelvin (54,000-90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on their passage through it. This "firewall" isn't a solid physical barrier it is a superheated, dense sea of highly energetic particles created by the compression of the solar wind slamming into interstellar space - obviously too sparse to transfer that heat and damage the probes due to the vacuum of space. Apparently, the probes discovered that the magnetic fields just outside the solar system run almost parallel to the ones inside the heliosphere. This challenges previous models and suggests a much smoother blending of solar and galactic environments than scientists originally expected. Think about that...two probes, designed and launched in the 1970s now tell us this. That's wonderful. 

Fascinating reading. You and @leicsmac blow my mind with some of the things you discuss. Sorry to ask, but how do you know/learn this stuff? Honestly, I wouldn't even know where to start in terms of researching these topics let alone understanding them. Thanks for sharing 🏆 

 

Edited Saturday at 10:11 by ian__marshall

[Grebfromgrebland]

27 minutes ago, ian__marshall said:

Fascinating reading. You and @leicsmac blow my mind with some of the things you discuss. Sorry to ask, but how do you know/learn this stuff? Honestly, I wouldn't even know where to start in terms of researching these topics let alone understanding them. Thanks for sharing 🏆 

 

You can start by going here everyday and see what's going on and then further into the websites 

 

 

NewsNow: Science News | Every Source, Every Five Minutes, 24/7

http://mobile.newsnow.co.uk/h/Science

 

[leicsmac]

31 minutes ago, ian__marshall said:

Fascinating reading. You and @leicsmac blow my mind with some of the things you discuss. Sorry to ask, but how do you know/learn this stuff? Honestly, I wouldn't even know where to start in terms of researching these topics let alone understanding them. Thanks for sharing 🏆 

 

Firstly, appreciate the compliment, mon ami. 

 

Secondly, in addition to what has been suggested above already, I would recommend the YouTube channels Astrum and Kurzgesagt and also the series Solar System with Brian Cox on iplayer. Both of these are excellent resources for knowing more about our immediate neighbourhood and what we've done to explore it. There are lots of other science communication resources out there too, so if you need more, please feel free to ask. 

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, ian__marshall said:

Fascinating reading. You and @leicsmac blow my mind with some of the things you discuss. Sorry to ask, but how do you know/learn this stuff? Honestly, I wouldn't even know where to start in terms of researching these topics let alone understanding them. Thanks for sharing 🏆 

 

Thank you so much. It's simply a love of the subject. You won't find me posting in the investments, stocks and shares thread, or whatever it is, because I don't have a business brain or a financially inclined cell in my body whilst others on this forum are clearly very informed. This is what shocks and irritates me so much about the Climate Change thread though - those feeling the need to post populist opinion about subjects they demonstrably have zero knowledge of whatsoever. Which in the age of social media, is reckless and frankly dangerous. 

 

I guess with space, it's attributed to a childhood fascination starting with the Apollo Programme that gripped the world. I recall my Mother telling me during Apollo 15 that if I looked closely enough at the moon I would be able to see the astronauts hopping about on the surface. My three year old impressionable, credulous brain saw no reason to doubt this and I used to haul myself up in my cot and peer through the curtains during those summer nights in a desperate bid to see if it was true. She steadfastly denies this now, I suppose it was an attempt to fire up my imagination at an early age. From then on, everything was space and space exploration. My heroes weren't just footballers, or rock stars, posters on the wall were as likely to be John Young as they were Keith Weller. I also started reading voraciously about astronomy feeding and nourishing my inner nerd - which was always present, even when I rebelled against everything, got flung out of sixth-form and became a committed hedonist for ten lost years, prior to returning to education.

 

@leicsmac has suggested some superb online resources, particularly Kurzgesagt which maintains a dry sense of humour that appeals to me. However, although websites such as the excellent space.com are brilliant for current and up to date news and research, my main go to is my books - and I have amassed hundreds on the subject. I was inculcated into the scientific method by my Father and Carl Sagan as a kid. My Dad oddly was nonetheless a very religious man, a physicist that still managed to reconcile science and the metaphysical/God in his head without any inherent contradictions as he saw it. Resisting his continual but pointless attempts at proselytisation, as an agnostic, I have grained tremendous comfort contemplating the universe and the natural world that surrounds us. Although my overwhelming conviction is that it is completely indifferent to us a species, (we are not special - although it's interesting to think that we may be the only truly sentient beings in the entire cosmos, that doesn't mean it revolves around us...or does it?), a humanist can still feel a profound sense of wonder about the universe. In fact, removing religious/supernatural woo/metaphysical elements from the equation often amplifies that awe, grounding it in the incredible reality of our existence. 

 

That is precisely what I felt as a child - an insuppressible fascination about the universe and space exploration that has not only endured but got stronger. I now have a job in research capability and I see this expertise paradox in many of the accomplished academics I have the pleasure to work with. As you learn more, your growing awareness of a topic's vastness and complexity makes you realise just how much you don't know, creating an ever-expanding horizon of questions. Over three hundred years ago the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal likened our knowledge to a sphere which as it grows larger inevitably increasing the area of which it comes into contact with the unknown. This is perhaps best and most succinctly summed up in Henry Miller’s The Wisdom of the Heart: “In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance”. When listening to academics, scientists and experts in their field talking about the latest advances in their domain, I have always found it more intriguing and generally more enlightening when they get onto the subject of things they don’t know. Perhaps that's why I find theoretical physicists and their literature so engrossing. 

 

Over Christmas/New Year I received a very grave medical prognosis, which long story cut short was due to a false reading on a PET scan which they are particularly prone to, because they find everything, be that benign or malign. It was binary, I either had distant metastasis to the bone (stage 4 cancer), or I didn't - the consultant and radiographer agreed it was 50/50, I spent 35 days not knowing until the results of further scans came through. Not only did I compose a paper of positivity, - a list of nine medically evidenced and rational reasons why metastasis was unlikely, but I also went on long walks with my dog, not wishing to involve family members and friends, during which time I gained tremendous solace from her unconditional companionship and the natural world around me, but also my preoccupation with the mysteries and unknows of the universe that we live in. In addition to this, simply mulling over facts and figures, such as the Voyager Probes, or even the pre- launch sequence of the Saturn V, ten seconds before lift off (fascinating subject that...I'll maybe do a post on it), stopped me from overthinking negativities (which if unchecked I am prone to doing), and far from denial, focussed my mind upon subjects that I love, keeping it active and that was tremendously stimulating avoiding spiralling into doom and depression. In similarly trying times, some may receive reassurance from religious belief, but for me, although I do also contemplate the nature of consciousness and our place in the cosmos, without resorting to a deity, the universe itself is a wonderful place because its beauty requires no supernatural explanation. Rather than diminishing its value, the lack of a preordained design makes existence a rare, accidental masterpiece. Science becomes the "poetry of reality," revealing a cosmos that is intricate, ancient, and deeply profound. This not only gave me great strength during a very challenging period of my life, but has pervaded it since childhood. The universe is both violent and vast but in me, that cultivates calm from my personal perspective that humanity not as a fragile target of chaos, but as a crucial product of it. Throughout my life I have found that embracing "cosmic insignificance" can instantly diminish my personal anxieties, shifting focus toward everyday joys and a profound, interconnected nature.