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During June I've been invited to speak at three special events. It's a particularly exciting month for me. Over the weekend of 14th we are visiting Langholm in southwest Scotland. It was the home of the Armstrongs, whose most famous family member was Neil who walked on the Moon.
I'll be delivering an appreciation of the life and work of Neil Armstrong at the memorial service on the Friday evening, in front of representatives of the US, UK and Scottish governments. Then I'll be giving a talk on the Saturday about what the astronauts left behind on the Moon, specifically the mirrors that are still being used today to carry out an extraordinary experiment into the nature of gravity.
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The second volume of The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth is now out in Italy, published by Dedalo.
From their website: “Genio, idee rivoluzionarie e scoperte epocali si scontrano con debolezze umane, rivalità e segreti inconfessabili nell’ instabile e travagliata Inghilterra della Restaurazione. Nell’ avvincente romanzo di un grande autore scientifico, un ritratto accurato e molto umano dei padri della scienza moderna.”
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My thanks to Lucy Jones for her review of The Day Without Yesterday.
She concludes, ‘Clark’s series serve as a discussion of science and society in a fictionalised form, crossing genre boundaries successfully, and prompting serious thought which is alarmingly relevant to today. Highly recommended reading for anybody with an interest in history and science.’
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I have a new post on my Across the Universe blog for the Guardian:
“Even if Nasa's Kepler space telescope is coming to the end of its mission, the search for other Earths will continue
The Kepler space telescope is in trouble. On Tuesday, during one of their regular twice-weekly communications slots, Nasa scientists found the telescope in "safe mode".
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Nikki and I are looking forward to spending Friday and Saturday in Warwickshire at the International Astronomy Show. We'll be looking around the forty or so stands and listening to many of the talks.
I'll being giving one on each day myself and hope to see many familiar and new faces. Come and talk to me afterwards at my book stall and if you are kind enough to buy one of my novels or other publications, I'd be delighted to sign it. If you don't, I'll enjoy chatting to you anyway!
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I have a new post on Across the Universe, my astronomy blog for The Guardian.
“Nasa's Skylab fell to Earth after budget cuts left it stranded in space. More than three decades later we are still struggling with the threat from space debris
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Novelist Pippa Goldschmidt has reviewed The Day Without Yesterday for the great website Lablit.
“I’ve read and reviewed the two earlier books in this trilogy and have been very impressed by the way Clark weaves together the stories of different historical characters into a coherent whole, not only getting across the revolutionary nature of their discoveries but also presenting them in the historical context to show how their contemporaries (mis)understood their findings.
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Last October I spoke about The Sensorium of God at the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland and one of the most fun things that happened while I was there was meeting photographer Kim Ayres. He was assembling a collection of images he was taking of writers posing as one of their favourite characters. I agreed to dress up as Isaac Newton. He auditioned three apples and when he was happy with our partnership he snapped away.
If you’d like to see Kim's thoughts about the result, you'll find them here:
And on Facebook:
thanks, Kim!
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I have the cover story on New Scientist this week. It sprang from a dynamite email I received from John Peacock, Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, late on the day of the big bang announcement. It pointed out that there could be tragedy as well as triumph in the announcement, and that perhaps we would never know how the Universe truly began.
"The end of the beginning
Cosmology's big breakthrough is a triumph. But the joy is not unalloyed.
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As readers of my novel, The Sensorium of God know, Isaac Newton was an arch heretic. Ahead of tonight’s BBC2 documentary about Isaac Newton, the BBC invited me to choose five ‘heretic’ scientists whose courage and determination I find inspiring:
“Great scientists change the way we view the world.