Today in Ukraine an international team of engineers is racing to assemble one of the most complex super structures ever built, at an extraordinary 36,000 tones it will be the largest structure moved on land. A mega dome tasked to entomb the crumbling remains of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded releasing 400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bom
On Monday 13 March 2006, eight healthy men signed up to take part in what seemed to been your run of the mill clinical trial. The trial was for an experimental drug known as TGN1412, its purpose was to treat leukaemia and it had already passed tests which were conducted on monkeys but this was the first time it would be tested on humans. This trial was later to become one of the most infamous
The ability to contemplate the meaning of the world around us brings out a constant desire to deepen our knowledge and broaden our horizons, this curiosity is fundamental to the development of our species and civilisation. From the advent of the wheel to the innovation of engines, from the cultivation of herbs to the development of modern medicine, from the abacus to computers human history is a r
At one time we thought the universe ticked off its motions with stately regularity, however with every development in understanding the world around us we discovered that much of the universe operates in a far more unpredictable way. Up until recently science had no explanation for such anomalies observed throughout the universe. The atmosphere, the oceans and much of outer space moves like a t
In the beginning the universe was a bit of a let down really, after the big bang nothing else really happened for millions of years. The big bang was not really the moment of creation, the real moment of creation came 100 million years later and it was a magical, metaphysical moment known as the cosmic dawn, the moment of first light when stars began to form. These first star formations were fu
In 1950, Percy Julian was one of the few African Americans who had a Ph.D. He was Chicago's man of the year and for good reason, he was a groundbreaking scientist. However, Percy did not have an easy road, he was the grandson of Alabama slaves and was met with every barrier possible with regards to living in a deeply segregated America. Denied teaching positions and the target of many death thr
The BBC and physicist Brian Cox have teamed up once again in order to bring us Forces of Nature, a four part television documentary series which beautifully combines some of the most amazing sights on Earth with calm and methodical narration by the man himself Professor Cox, all to uncover the underlying forces of nature. Episode 1: The Universe in a Snowflake The opening episode of this ser
The Samurai were considered to be the hero's of ancient Japan and still to this day their legend continues to live on and the Samurai sword is one of the greatest fighting weapons of all time. A perfectly engineered piece of hardware for close combat, renowned for it's deadly cutting edge. With the use of modern science we can now reveal just how technically excellent the ancient craft of manuf
Like much of the United States, Dover, Pennsylvania has become a town divided, split between those who accept Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and those who reject it. This rift between science and scripture nearly destroyed the community after a Dover high school student painted a mural showing the evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors. This idea that humans were descendants of primates