Science and Technology Dispatches

Russian Meteor

Once again we are reminded that we live in a cosmic shooting gallery. With the unannounced arrival of a meteorite over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia, and the unrelated near miss by asteroid 2012DA14 we can see how delicate the balance of our exis

A Weighty Matter

How much does a kilogram actually weigh. It's an interesting question, originally it was defined as 'a volume of water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre, at the temperature of melting ice', which is fine, but not very practical. In

Quantum Smell

There's an old joke that goes “My Dog's got no nose” “No nose? How does he smell?” “Terrible!” It's not very funny but it asks an interesting question, just how do we smell something? Well a controversial new theory suggests that the way