The Science Thinkers

Detonating a nuclear bomb seems like a risky business in general, but in the early 1960s, the US and the Soviet Union were busy trying to figure out what would happen if you set one off in space? The answer turned out to be something they didn’t really expect. A nuclear blast could cause a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse or EMP, a … Read more

In all of World War Two, the world used about 5 megatons of explosives. But now, a single American Ohio Class submarine can carry 24 Trident II missiles. Only one Trident II missile capable of carrying 12 nuclear warheads together equivalent in power to about 5 megatons of explosives. A single submarine can carry a … Read more

In the outskirts of our solar system, billions of kilometres past Pluto, there might be a mysterious planet lurking in the abyss. The hypothetical body is known as Planet X or Planet Nine, and some astronomers have been trying to prove its existence for a good chunk of the last decade. It’s believed that the … Read more

The universe is everything from the tiniest particles to the largest galaxies to the very existence of space-time and life. But how did it all begin? The origin of the universe is the origin of everything. Multiple scientific theories plus creation myths from around the world have tried to explain its mysterious Genesis. However, the most widely accepted explanation is the Big Bang Theory. … Read more

In ancient times humans studied the night sky and discovered the worlds of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But beyond this realm of knowledge, another world shined brightly just waiting to be discovered. Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, from a distance of about 20 astronomical units or 20 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Uranus orbits the … Read more

How does a space probe like Voyager 2 which was launched in 1977 visit the four outer planets and travel over 17 billion kilometres over space with almost next there nothing in the way of fuel? By the time Voyager 2 had reached Neptune it had swung by Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus travelled 7 billion kilometres and was still … Read more

After studying the solar system for hundreds of years, you would think we, at least, have the basics figured out, stuff like why planets spin and orbit the way they do. Except, we totally don’t. And you only have to look at the planet next door to see it. When scientists began observing Venus in detail in the 1950s … Read more

  In the grand scheme of things, we have not been at the space exploration game very long, but we have already learned a ton about the solar system. We have sent probes to planets and asteroids and comets. We know what they look like, what they are made of, their temperatures, atmospheres and so much more.   But … Read more

There are things in nature so huge or complex that the only way to really study them is to build something enormous. Like, physicists didn’t just find the Higgs boson by fishing it out from under the couch. It took the world’s largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider, to observe it. But when it comes to outright size, … Read more

Why does time pass? It is a question so profound that few people would even think to ask it yet its effects are all around. Human beings live in a perpetual present inexorably sealed off from the past, but moving relentlessly into the future. For most people time seems to be something that is just out there, a … Read more

Humans have done a pretty good job of exploring the Earth thus far, climbing mountains and crossing continents and planting our flags all over the place in the name of science. But one part of the world that has remained pretty mysterious to us also happens to cover more than 70% of its surface: the ocean. Yes, we … Read more

At the beginning of the 20th century, many scientists started thinking that Physics was pretty much over. Surely we have a few unsolved mysteries left but it seemed like they could all be ironed out with better measurements or maybe with very slight tweaks to what was already known. The problem was, those mysteries didn’t … Read more

The moon is our planet’s constant, dependable companion. Whether it’s waxing, waning, or shining in its full glory, it always presents the same face to Earth: a mottled, monochrome landscape of black and white rocks. Depending on where you are in the world, you might see different things in that great inkblot in the sky. Some see the … Read more

Lots of genetic diseases come down to a small change to a single gene. So you would think that with genetic engineering we would be able to treat or even cure these diseases, an idea which is known as gene therapy. The concept has a lot of potentials and there are already a few successful treatments on the market, including … Read more

A team of researchers at the University of Pretoria and City University of Hong Kong has recently developed a continuous smartphone user authentication system based on gait analysis. This system, outlined in a paper presented at the 44th annual conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, takes advantage of a device’s pre-existing hardware, authenticating smartphone … Read more