Master of the velvet dark

Across the great divide: why would a science writer write about art?

Step by step

The hedgehog knows one big thing

Special brew

Window on the womb

Where are we now?

Folding games, wetsuits and the warm thrill of confusion

High flyers

Special(ish) post

This post is by way of a test of premium content. It’s me wittering on, hopefully in an entertaining manner. Science fiction gets a bad press. Consumed by antisocial nerds of dubious personal hygiene. Worthless escapism. Bug-eyed monsters, rayguns and wish fulfilment fantasies. Dubious gender stereotypes. Those tropes

A Koan on the Moon

It might not exactly count as science news, but I couldn’t not mention the first US soft-landing on the moon in over half a century, and the first led by a commercial company: the spacecraft Odysseus touched down at crater Malapert A, near the lunar south pole, on

Wax on, wax off, wax push

Phase change materials are interesting things. I first came across them as materials for building: most people will have noticed that buildings made of stone or concrete tend to be quite cool inside, even when the weather is extremely hot. This is because the materials can absorb a great deal

Let's eat grandma

My eye was caught this week by a feature article about the history of human cannibalism To be precise, I first saw it thanks to a comment by a friend enquiring “Did a cannibal write this?” (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26134783-600-is-it-time-for-a-more-subtle-

Sunshine superman

These digests of latest research stories which catch my eye will be paid-for content on the Alcedo newsletter once it’s up and running. We’ve been using solar cells for longer than you think. The underlying science – the photovoltaic effect, when sunlight dislodges electrons from the structure of

Alcedo 1

I’ve been writing about nuclear fusion since about 2005 (when, of course, it was supposed to be available by now) so the news about the largest ever amount of energy obtained through it -  at JET, the Joint European Torus experimental tokamak in Culham, Oxfordshire, seemed particularly significant. A  tokomak