I dedicate a fair chunk of my book on the way that quantum physics is transforming our world, The Quantum Age , to superconductors. These remarkable substances with no electrical resistance and impressive magnetic properties are already supporting a range applications from MRI scanners to maglev trains, but what is always described as the 'holy grail' of superconductivity is a room temperature superconductor. The earliest examples had to be cooled within a couple of degrees of absolute zero (-273.15 °C), and even now they need either liquid helium or liquid nitrogen, depending on the type, to keep them cool enough. This is okay for specialist applications, but means they can't break out into everyday everywhere use. But if a superconductor could work easily at room temperature it would transform electronics and electrical products everywhere. Hence the excitement whenever a new temperature high is announced. This happened recently when the simple compound hydrogen sul...

I will never know now if the Labour party would have weeded me out as a potential agitator if I had completed my application to be a supporter, because my political posts here have rarely been in support of Labour. Having said that I could say, hand on heart, I have voted Labour at three general elections (not all for Tony Blair), so it would have been highly unfair to have done so. I also am rather saddened by the way they appear pleased to have weeded out hundreds, if not thousands of 'Green Party supporters'. My suspicion is that a fair proportion of Green voters are actually Labour supporters who weren't happy with the way the party had gone and wanted to return to the fold. My suspicion is the majority of voters are not 100% committed to a single party, even if they don't float as much as I do. Despite the fact that I may well have been excluded, as someone who is more often a right-leaning Lib Dem (cousin Nick insists, even now), I would be delighted if Je...

Recently I was berated on Facebook for appealing to authority. As it may not be obvious to everyone why this was a put down (as the picture makes clear it was), I thought it might be worth looking at the problem with authority in science - and why I wasn't actually falling for this failing. Arguably the biggest issue with Ancient Greek science, an approach that spread its way through most of the medieval period, was the dependence on authority. Just as we still do in law cases, most classical natural philosophy was decided by argument rather than by experiment or analysis. If someone repeatedly won the argument on a topic they were regarded as an authority and in some cases - Aristotle is the most obvious example - considered a source of wisdom on pretty well everything as a result. Hence the infamous suggestion that women had fewer teeth than men because Aristotle said it was so, and no one bothered to check. (Actually I am sure plenty did check and found it to be wrong, but b...

SF greats, ancient and modern I was interested to note a debacle started by  a US list of top 100 science fiction and fantasy books. We'll come back to this furore over the suggestion that many of these books were 'shockingly offensive' in a moment, but first a couple of comments about the list itself. To me it seems a mistake to conflate fantasy and science fiction - where most of their SF choices seemed sensible, I wouldn't have included over 50 per cent of the fantasy, which makes me suspect that there should be two separate lists. If we just concentrate on the SF books, there were inevitably some ridiculous omissions. No John Wyndham, for instance (probably reflecting this being a US list). No Alfred Bester, James, Blish, Fred Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth or (if you want to be more obscure) no E. F. Russell. However it wasn't a bad list overall - no one will ever agree with everything in such a collection. So what about the  moaning article  in the New State...

Thanks to Dr Phil Langton of Bristol University for bringing to my attention this interesting piece in Times Higher Education by Yellowlees Douglas on the way that 'understanding the reading brain can help academics and students improve [their writing skills].' Douglas, an associate professor of management communication (no, really, they exist) at the University of Florida argues that we have a lot of data on the reading brain - how we take in information from the written word - and that we can make use of that to provide a series of rules for 'science-based writing' which could be taught in secondary schools to improve the quality of writing. I don't doubt that we could do more to teach writing skills, but to my mind this is a craft, and benefits as much from practice and feedback as it does from a framework of rules, which the best writers break with ease anyway. However, there's something more dangerous here, which is the assumption that academic stud...

 The other day, for complicated reasons, we got locked out of our house. Knowing it would be a bit of a rip-off, but needing help, we phoned a company with the website mylocksmithinswindon.co.uk on a Swindon number. They answered quickly and I agreed to go with a pretty hefty hourly rate, but no call-out charge. As it turned out, this 'local' firm appeared to be based in Birmingham, but they promised me the locksmith would arrive within the hour. It was a nice sunny day and we didn't mind sitting out in the garden for the 2 hours it actually took. The person who came did a great job and got us inside in under 10 minutes. So a mixed effort, especially when the bill came and it turned out that the price quoted was without VAT, which I thought was illegal, or at least highly dubious, for a consumer quote. Shortly after I got an email asking to review them on something called trustpilot.co.uk, which I thought was worthwhile. I gave them 3 stars out of five, pointing out the...

For years I've struggled with finding a robust mechanism to make it possible to download ebooks from my website. Finally I've got something working*, and to celebrate this (and help parents get through the school holidays), I've reduced my ebook Organizing a Murder from £9.99 to £2.99 until the end of August. This all started many years ago when I helped run a youth group. One of my contributions was to script mystery evenings where the young people had to solve murders or undertake treasure hunts. There were those 'murder mystery party' kits you could buy, but they were very expensive, and they involved role play for a specific number of players. I needed something without the complexity of role play and that could be played as an individual or teams. Some of the mysteries/treasure hunts have found their way into this ebook - others were written specially for it. It was a pleasure to put together - very different from writing popular science. There's a ...

I'm reissuing this post from way back in 2009, as the media, including the BBC  (which ought to know better) have been going on about there being a blue moon last month. No, there wasn't. See below. I've seen lots of Twittering over the last few days suggesting that there is going to be a blue moon tonight. Sorry, guys, there isn't. Take it away Terry Moseley of the Irish Astronomical Association : There has been a false idea circulating that this will be a 'Blue Moon' because it's the second Full Moon in a month! That erroneous description started when Sky & Telescope magazine wrongly interpreted an old New England Farmer's Almanac as calling the 2nd Full Moon in a month a 'Blue Moon'. They later admitted that they had got it wrong, and published a correction, but not everyone saw the retraction. A 'Blue Moon' means a very rare and unpredictable event, and it arose after the great Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 blew so m...

I will never make a restaurant critic like my friend Matthew Fort  (that's a terrible photo of him on the Guardian page, btw), in part because I have the kind of unsubtle tastes that mean that anything 'smothered in barbecue sauce' attracts my instant attention, but I just wanted to recommend two discoveries of American restaurants in capital cities that are well above the average TGI Friday/Hard Rock Cafe tourist food quality and yet not exorbitant despite being in high end locations. In London, I have been highly impressed by Joe's Southern Kitchen and Bar in Covent Garden (apparently there is also now one in Kentish Town). Excellent chilli cup and great 'Southern fried bird'. The wings are great too. If you want to be more exotic there's blackened catfish fillet that took me back to New Orleans and an impressive sounding vegetable gumbo (not tried that). The ambiance is murky but fun and the music can be overloud (my 21-year-old daughter said this, s...