Has Pluto been replaced by a primordial black hole?
Monday, May 4, 2020
When I was young, Pluto was still a planet and nine was my lucky number, so I really liked that we had nine planets in our solar system - it made it easy for me to remember. My love of astronomy out-lasted Pluto’s status as a planet, and as I write this I am actually wearing a solar system neckla... .. read more..
The Search For Unintelligent Life
Monday, January 20, 2020
Imagine an alien. If you’ve been influenced by movies and television at all, the creature you’re picturing is probably two-legged, two-armed, bipedal and with a reminiscently human layout – head, eyes and mouth somewhere near the top. And while most of us recognise that this vision of extra-terre... .. read more..
Why does the green movement hate GM?
Monday, November 25, 2019
GM is a topic that people seem to lump in with the general 'green' environmental movement - many organisations and individuals who describe themselves as being environmentalists also advocate the banning of GM products. Which seems very strange to me because as a biologist, I've never seen anythi... .. read more..
Genetically Modified Myths Examined
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially plants, get a lot of hate. People - even some very environmentally conscious people - seem to fear or hate GM crops. Yet, as someone who is very worried about climate change, very worried about the human-induced mass extinction event that is happe... .. read more..
How do we know humans are causing climate change?
Sunday, October 27, 2019
This is a question I've found myself being asked to address repeatedly over the last few weeks and months, so I thought I would just write down my answer here instead. .. read more..
Can We Develop Technology to Break Down Microplastics?
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Humanity could vanish from the Earth right now, and our legacy would still linger for a thousand years. The world is waking to the reality of anthropogenic climate change, but that's not the full story when it comes to how we've remade this planet in our image . Our obsession with plastic has flo... .. read more..
Warming Climate Spells Chaos for Seasonal Bird Migrations
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Climate change is causing spring to arrive earlier in much of North America, but this advance is not happening uniformly across many bird's migration routes. .. read more..
May Editorial
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
If you’ve tried to visit Curious Meerkat lately, or have looked on the Twitter or Facebook pages, you might have been wondering what’s going on. That’s because I’ve been taking a little break to re-organise the website slighty. I’ve recently become aware that no matt... .. read more..
Cleaner fish more self-aware than thought
Monday, April 29, 2019
A study published in February calls into question the widely held belief that fish are stupid, by showing that they can recognise their own reflection. .. read more..
Safe Image Sources
Friday, April 19, 2019
NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html Phylopic: http://phylopic.org/ Morguefile https://morguefile.com/photos Kalyan Varma http://kalyanvarma.net/ Unsplash https://unsplash.com .. read more..