I shudder to think what it must have been like in the path of Cyclone Winston. It is hard to conceive of winds 230 km/h sustained for minutes at a time. I remember vividly what is now known as the Great Storm of 1987 (an extra-tropical cyclone) which pulverised south-east England on 15/16 October 1987. There […]
Continue readingMonth: February 2016
The problem with science communication
Yesterday I was part of a very interesting workshop on Science in Society, in Auckland. There was a plethora of good examples of science communication discussed – including forest restoration on the East Coast, biological control of pests in vineyards in Canterbury and improvement of health outcomes for Native Americans in Montana. For me, it […]
Continue readingGravitational Waves
The big breaking physics news is the detection of gravitational waves. These waves are distortions in space-time, caused by a large mass doing something spectacular (two colliding black holes in this case) that propagate across the universe and create tiny changes in space when they reach us. The commentary here describes what goes on. Essentially, […]
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