SF Universe

Category: Science

  • Channel 4 Cancels Time Team

    [I]n last week\’s edition of Radio Times (March 23rd-29th), I was extremely saddened to read that Channel 4 has scrapped their excellent and popular archaeology series, Time Team, which has graced UK television screens for the past twenty years. As a big fan of archaeology and history, this news has come as a huge disappointment…

  • Reading History: The Invention That Changed the World by Robert Buderi

    [I]\’ve always been fascinated by history, and in my other (non-SF geek) life I\’m actually an historian by profession (I used to be a history teacher, believe it or not). So, for a change, I\’m going to recommend not an SF book, but this really fascinating technological history book that I picked up a few…

  • The Apollo 11 Moon Landings and After – The Space Adventure That Should Have Been

    Today marks the 40th Anniversary of Man\’s first setting foot on another world, when Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface, There\’s the expected buzz on the internet, and a few television programs celebrating the event. At the moment, we\’re watching Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 on UK television (ITV1). I\’ve always been a huge space…

  • Hominids in the House: Distant Relatives

    There was a nice article in Nature recently relating a few interesting facts about some startling hominid fossil finds in Kenya, finds which challenge some long-held views on human evolution. There were two fossils – a broken upper jawbone and an intact skull – nothing too startling in that. But what was startling is that…

  • Some Interesting Prehistoric Stuff

    I love to browse the Sci-Tech page (page 154) on BBC1\’s Ceefax (teletext) service. There\’s always a lot of interesting snippets culled from various sources such as the New Journal of Physics, Nature and Science magazines. My favourite areas of interest are astronomy and space exploration, and palaeontology, and here are a couple of palaeontology…

  • Cassini Finds Another Saturnian Moon

    So the Cassini mission has found another moon orbiting Saturn? That brings the total of moons around the ringed planet up to a total of sixty. Sixty moons! Sounds mighty impressive, doesn\’t it? It\’s a little \’un, only a rock, really, at a mere 2km (1.2 miles) in diameter. That\’s 4-5 times smaller than the…

  • Fossilised Remains of Giant Dino Bird Found in China

    I\’m just sitting back, having a late-night cup of tea, and browsing the Ceefax pages on TV (Ceefax is the teletext service of the UK\’s BBC TV), and I\’ve come across a fascinating page. Apparently the fossilized remains of a giant bird-like dinosaur have been recently uncovered in the Inner Mongolia region of China. This…