I have a new story published by ESA:

"ESA's Planck mission has revealed that our Galaxy contains previously undiscovered islands of cold gas and a mysterious haze of microwaves. These results give scientists new treasure to mine and take them closer to revealing the blueprint of cosmic structure. ..."

Click the Read more link below the tags if you cannot see the full story already.

I have a new story published by ESA:

"ESA's Mars Express has returned strong evidence for an ocean once covering part of Mars. Using radar, it has detected sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor within the boundaries of previously identified, ancient shorelines on Mars. ..."

Click the Read more link below the tags if you cannot see the full story already.

The pulse project recently asked me to explain to them about the origin of astrophysics in less than five minutes. So I did. You can listen in the player below

I have a new story on New Scientist:

"It's time to declare a ceasefire in the fight to find out whether the constants of nature vary. What was supposed to be a new superweapon in the battle has turned into something of a damp squib.

Some observations of how hydrogen gas in space absorbs light at ultraviolet wavelengths have hinted that the fine structure constant, responsible for the strength of electromagnetism, is not the same throughout the universe. That would point to exotic new physics, including the existence of extra dimensions and universes other than our own. ..."

You can read the full article here.

If you've been following the demise of the failed Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt, you may have seen the rather extraordinary claims that America 'shot down' the spacecraft. The story exploded this week with a Russian newspaper publishing more details of the accusations. I thought it would be a good idea to do a little sanity check on these ideas, and New Scientist published the results:

"First there were cries of sabotage, although there was never a clear motive. Now the bizarre suggestion that the US shot down Russia's Phobos-Grunt space probe has morphed into a slightly less strange claim. A Russian newspaper has reported that radar beamed from a US military base could have accidentally damaged the probe, leading to its demise.

The spacecraft launched on 9 November with the aim of returning soil samples from the surface of Mars's largest moon, Phobos, but mysteriously failed to fire its upper-stage rocket and became stranded in Earth orbit until it re-entered the atmosphere on Sunday. How plausible is the suggestion that radar is to blame for the probe's failure? ..."

You can read the full article for free here.