The USS Gerald R Ford and the HMS Queen Elizabeth are the latest and most modern aircraft carriers in the world. Both use the latest technology to support planes like the F-35 but why has the British carrier not followed in the footsteps of the American carriers and used nuclear …
Merlin – The Engine that Won the War
Now it may sound like a bit of a bold claim that one engine helped change the course of world war 2 but when you look at the evidence you will see that it has a lot of validity, but it wasn’t the only good engine around at the time, …
Shinkansen vs TGV – Is One Better Than the Other?
The Japanese shinkansen or bullet train and the TGV from France are the original high-speed rail trains and although they provide a similar service they are quite distinct in their own right and yet they have a common starting point but is possible to say if one better than the …
Could We Really Sleep in Space for Years?
Watch almost any film involving deep space travel apart from the fantasy ones and you’ll see people going into or coming out of stasis of which the waking up part usually looks quite unpleasant but could this type of induced hibernation for longer space journeys become a reality in the …
What Fossils Will We Leave Behind in 65 Million Years?
65 million years ago the dinosaurs died out, we only know they existed at all because of the tiny amount of their fossilized remains that have been found and they had endured for about 165 million years. We, modern humans, on the other hand, have existed for about only 50,000 …
Is this the fastest thing in the universe?
This is a Geiger counter, every click you hear is a little piece of ionizing radiation, which in this device could be alpha, beta, x-ray or gamma rays passing through it’s detector, the faster the clicks the more radiation there is. Ionizing radiation is of particular interest because unlike lower …
Can We Control the Weather with Technology?
As the weather around the world reaches new extremes the big challenge will be to try and mitigate the effects of climate change by changing the way we create and use energy, transport and food production. But could there be other ways using the technology we have today to try …
Apollo’s Forgotten Computer – The LVDC
Watching a Saturn V launch is still an awe-inspiring sight but there is far more going on than meets the eye. The Saturn V was far too complicated to fly by hand but contrary to popular belief it wasn’t the Apollo guidance computer or AGC in the command module doing …
F-1 The Engine That Nearly Stopped the Apollo Moon Missions
With the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 coming up is easy to forget that the whole Apollo program was a ground-breaking succession of technologies but one was essential to literally get things off the ground. The Rocketdyne F1 engines would be the biggest, most powerful single-chamber rocket engines ever built …
Will our electricity come from space in the future?
As our need for Electricity increases, solar power is increasingly seen as the future of renewable, green electricity generation. Every hour more solar energy reaches the earth than the whole world uses in a year. But it has two big drawbacks, our atmosphere, 30% of the suns energy is reflected …