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I have a new story published on my Guardian blog, Across the Universe:
The European GOCE satellite is falling uncontrollably to Earth but no one need worry too much...
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Today on Radio 4 you can hear me talking about the discoveries of exo-planets, systems of planets orbiting other stars. Astronomers have just passed the 1000 mark on the scoreboard, but we have yet to identify a twin to Earth. I am being interviewed on Inside Science at 16.30 and 21.00 hrs.
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I am grateful to Lee Billings who has written a most favourable review of my book Voyager: 101 Wonders between Earth and the Edge of the Cosmos, published this year in the United States by Atlantic Books who published it here in the UK a couple of years ago for Waterstones. This latest and colourfully written review appears in the magazine Scientific American.
If you would like to read it please click here.
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Today's Across the Universe story is:
Asteroid 2013 TV135 has a 99.998% chance of missing Earth in 2032. Yet it's the 0.002% possibility that is capturing the headlines
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My latest piece for Across the Universe has been posted:
"Any day now, the thousandth exoplanet discovery will be logged, but Earth's twin is not among them. Where are the habitable planets and why can't astronomers find them?
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I have a new piece published on my Guardian blog, Across the Universe:
“Europe's Mars exploration ambition passes a milestone with a successful trial of ESA's ExoMars rover in the Chilean desert
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I have a new article published today on the BBC Future website:
“Why a probe passing our planet on its way to Jupiter might end a decades-old mystery, and reveal something completely new about gravity.
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I have the cover story on BBC Focus magazine, issue number 260, this month:
“This year could go down in history as the one when a revolution in our understanding of the Universe truly began. The Planck space observatory, located 1.5 million km from Earth, is shedding new light on the story of the Universe, from its inception 13.8 billion years ago to the present day. In this month's Focus, find out how Planck's discoveries are rewriting the history of our cosmos.”
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I have a new article published in New Scientist [issue 2935 21 Sept 2013]
Gravity ripples: The race to catch the next wave
IT RESEMBLED the Oscars, only with physicists rather than actors. Three hundred of them were gathered in a ballroom in Arcadia, California; another 100 were connected by video link. All of them were waiting for the opening of an envelope.
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I have a new post on the Guardian's Across the Universe about Voyager 1 leaving the magnetic field of the Sun, defining the edge of the solar system:
Voyager 1 has left the building, by which I mean the solar system. A historic milestone in exploration has been reached and the hero is a spacecraft