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Carbon — to capture or not to capture

This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture...

The Azolla Event: when is a fern not a fern?

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Betelgeuse, Gamow, and a Big Red Horse

There has been a lot of talk recently of Betelgeuse possibly going supernova this century or not...

Climate Change, the Walrus and the Carpenter

I have recently watched two videos on climate change by Sabine Hossenfelder.  The first one...

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Robert H OlleyRSS Feed of this column.

Until recently, I worked in the Polymer Physics Group of the Physics Department at the University of Reading.

I would describe myself as a Polymer Morphologist. I am not an astronaut,

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An Alimentary Voyage

An Alimentary Voyage

Nov 01 2012 | comment(s)

Yesterday evening, on BBC4 Television, I watched a repeat of Guts: The Strange and Wonderful World of the Human Stomach. 


TV presenter Michael Mosley was the main exhibit in a public experiment at the Science Museum in London, exploring the inside story of the human digestive system.  He swallowed a mini camera in a pill that took photographs three times a second as it passed through his gut. 

What hasn’t changed since 1969?

What hasn’t changed since 1969?

Aug 27 2012 | comment(s)

Neil Armstrong changed the way we think of ourselves – but, oddly, not the way we think of the Moon, writes Daniel Hannan on Telegraph Blogs.

But what I particularly like is the comment by one Maria Kay:
I've toured the USS Hornet, now retired in Alameda, Calif. (That is the aircraft carrier that fished the Apollo 11 capsule out of the ocean.) There is a small museum of moonshot memorabilia stored on board.
Plants muscling in?

Plants muscling in?

Aug 22 2012 | comment(s)

Do plants have muscles?  Strictly speaking, no, but time-lapse photography shows that they can be quite thuggish in behaviour.

Sailing on the Jurassic Coast

Sailing on the Jurassic Coast

Aug 17 2012 | comment(s)

The sailing event of the recent 2012 London Olympics were held at Weymouth, half-way along Dorset and East Devon’s famous Jurassic Coast.  Thinks:


Sources: Sailing picture: goc2012.culture.gov.uk; Plesiosaur LHL Digital Collections
Is Your Duck Too Fat?

Is Your Duck Too Fat?

Aug 13 2012 | comment(s)

The BBC (cue: Land of Hope and Glory!) has just started yet another series on Chinese food.  In Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure, two famous chefs, the illustrious Ken Hom OBE and the rising star Ching-He Huang (黃瀞億) (neither of whom has an entry in Chinese Wikipedia) are travelling around China, and so far have been travelling around the region of Beijing, encountering a Grandmaster of Peking Duck.  Crisp skin and moist meat are essential, but the Chinese are becoming increasingly health-conscious, and over half of the ducks they eat are now of a reduced-fat v