The moon (in case you aren't sure what we're talking about). Image from Wikipedia A seriously dodgy statistic from that renowned historian of science Cherie Blair, just had me jumping up and down in the coffee shop. She proclaimed in an article in the i newspaper: 'It took less than 40 years to put a man on the moon.' 'Really? did it really? And how the heck did you work that out?' I nearly shouted. Leaving aside whether or not it should have been 'fewer than 40 years', let's try to pin it down. The first manned moon landing was 1969, so assuming 'less than 40' is 30-39 years that puts us approximately between 1930 and 1939. I'm struggling to find anything that fits that date. Tsiolkovsky's Investigation of Outer Space Rocket Devices was published in 1903, Goddard was flying rockets by 1915 and published his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes , where he suggested a rocket would reach the moon 5 years later. And, ...

I've never been a great fan of what most people think of as fantasy, typified by Game of Thrones . I can cope with a few classics like Lord of the Rings , and some variants like the Amber series, but for me, the kind of fantasy that is really exciting is set in the real world where something then goes adrift, introducing fantastical elements. And that's exactly what happens in London Falling by Paul Cornell. The first 30 pages or so could be a straightforward, gritty police procedural featuring undercover cops. But suddenly and dramatically the main characters' universe is pushed askew. It's hard to describe exactly what results, but if  you imagine a combination of a modern version of The Devil Rides Out , a dark police procedural and a sprinkling of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and you might come close. Four individuals - a detective inspector, two recently undercover officers and an intelligence analyst - are pulled into a world where a kind of magic dependen...

Every now and then I have to sit down and breathe deeply when seeing a tabloid science headline that is about as far as the truth as is possible. Usually such headlines use a kind of bait and switch mechanism where the headline proclaims something dramatic, but the article makes much weaker claims, or points out that most scientists think this is a load of tosh. (Even New Scientist rather likes doing this.) But the Daily Express has come up with an outright winner where the article backs up the headline with a story that bears little resemblance to science as we know it. Let's see if we can spot what's a little iffy with this 'Scientists discover what existed BEFORE the beginning of the universe' article: Scientists have not 'discovered' anything. That means finding something. What has happened is someone has come up with a model that produces these results. It's a bit like confusing having a business plan with being a billionaire. We read in the ar...

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I recently had pointed out to me that all my efforts in writing How To Build a Time Machine (aka Build Your Own Time Machine ) were wasted because time travel is apparently impossible - at least according to this new theory  which suggests that 'now' is defined by the extent of expansion of the universe and new time is only created with that expansion. Thankfully, we don't need to worry too much. To begin with, the idea the theory presents of 'now' being defined by the state of expansion of the universe seems strangely detached from the fundamental idea in relativity that simultaneity is relative - the author seems to postulate a universal 'now' - which just doesn't exist. And for that matter, it's a bit late to say that time travel isn't possible, because it is always happening on a small scale - relativity makes it inevitable. Tell the Voyager 1 probe, which has travelled over a second into the future that time travel isn't possible...

I've now heard twice in a news context about the way that men are poor at 'dad skills'. I really don't care about whether or not this true. But what worries me here is how spurious the data is that produces this kind of news piece. The 'news' was based on 'a survey of 2,000 men.' But we can't tell from this the quality of that data, nor do we tend to think about how the question is asked can have an influence on the result.  In this particular case, I have seen the original questionnaire. Participants were asked to pick from a list of 50 'skills' by ticking a box (online) alongside each skill. I would be very surprised if most participants did not pick out the handful of skills they thought represented them best, producing a 'men are bad at dad skills' result. No one really wants to tick 50 boxes. I suspect the result would have been very different if they had started with all the boxes ticked and asked participants to untick the ones...

On my drive home from the centre of Swindon I pass a couple of billboards which have recently, once again, displayed a very mysterious message (one shown here*). It's a bizarre and pretty much meaningless message, yet someone has spent a lot of money on it. Billboard advertising is not particularly cheap. You might think that it means Apple is going to sue us every time we mention an apple, but according to the website that seems to be related to the posters, it is all based on a bizarre pseudo-legal claim, with no basis in law, that your birth certificate means that you handed over your name to the Crown/government, and it is then illegal to use your name without their permission. There have been absolute shedloads of discussion of these things on the internet - plus quite a few websites making the claim supporting this idea that you do not have legal ownership of your name. I'm not going to link to these for reasons discussed below, but you can easily find them if yo...

It's every teenager's duty to find music that his or her parents will hate. (I was discussing this with a daughter the other day, and it's very difficult these days, because parents' music is less different to that of their kids. My prog rock was worlds away from Bing Crosby - but unless my children liked rap, which they don't, it's hard to find any of their music which I don't find acceptable. However, I digress.) I struggled with achieving something suitably distasteful, as my first love was classical, and I was very lukewarm about the obvious rebel music of my youth, punk, except in smartened up versions like Blondie and Toyah. But I eventually discovered the perfect choice in Van der Graaf Generator . The dismal songs, the wailing sax and Peter Hammill's despair-filled rough vocals fit the bill entirely. Along with other student fancies such as difficult novels and Stockhausen, I gave up VdGG when I fully embraced adult life, but in the last fe...

A recent Guardian article made a dark comment about the past of the British royal family. Jamie Doward tells us Most royals are proud that they can trace their lineage back centuries. But princesses Beatrice and Eugenie may be reluctant to delve too far into their past. New analysis reveals that Prince Andrew’s daughters are the direct descendants of a major slave-owning family. I've got a bit of news for Jamie. He too is a descendant of a major slave-owning family. You may wonder how I know this, because I've never met Jamie, nor do I know anything about him or her. But I can make this claim with confidence because we all are descendants of major slave-owning families. One of the fascinating revelations in Adam Rutherford's book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Has Ever Lived , is that if you are of European origins, then you are a descendant of everyone alive at the start of the eleventh century who has living descendants. Every one of them. And plenty of them wou...