by Colin Stuart | May 17, 2017 | Astronomy, Explainer
The day may be 24 hours long now, but that hasn’t always been the case. Nor will it be the case in the far future. The Earth’s rotation is slowing under the gravitational influence of the Moon. Billions of years ago, the day was just 18 hours long. The Moon and the...
by Colin Stuart | May 15, 2017 | Astronomy, Explainer, History
In today’s hyper-connected world we take communication for granted. A few taps and you can fire a message around the world in seconds. You can even tweet from space. But things weren’t also so easy, and back in the 1880s the technology of the day was...
by Colin Stuart | May 8, 2017 | Explainer, Inspiration, Thoughts
If you are afraid of speaking in public, then you certainly aren’t alone. Survey after survey has shown it to be one of the things that people fear the most. In a now infamous poll from the 1970s, forty-one per cent of people said they were afraid of public speaking,...
by Colin Stuart | May 3, 2017 | Astronomy, Explainer
The theory that our universe began with a ‘big bang’ is one of the most famous ideas in all of science. It has seeped into popular culture, too, with one of the most famous television shows in the world named after it. Yet, despite its fame, it was only confirmed...
by Colin Stuart | Apr 30, 2017 | Explainer, Thoughts
A few weeks ago I was giving a talk in a school on my kids book Why Space Matters to Me. At the end a girl asked me what seemed a fairly simple question: “why is the sky up?” My answer was equally simple, but her jaw dropped when I gave it. “It...
by Colin Stuart | Dec 2, 2016 | Explainer, solar system, Uncategorised
I talk to a lot of people about the universe. Tens of thousands of people a year, ranging from 3-year-olds to 93-year-olds. And one of the things everyone finds hard to comprehend is the sheer scale of the universe. We’re used to dealing with a daily...
