Runner-up of the Hilary Term 2020 Schools’ Writing Competition Lucy Fan, Year 10, Surrey ‘Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.’ This is the most famous line uttered by Greta Thunberg- the 16 year old climate change activist who’s acted as the catalyst for so many school…
Runner-up of the Hilary Term 2020 Schools’ Writing Competition Elizabeth Dewes, Year 11, West Midlands Since the rise of Greta Thunberg, everyone has had at least some insight into the sinister threat of climate change. We are beginning to see the catastrophic effects of our average global temperature rising, with 10 million hectares of land…
Runner-up of the Hilary Term 2020 Schools’ Writing Competition Ayeza Akhtar, Year 12, Greater Manchester “Climate change will be irreversible by 2030” – UN. That gives us a mere 10 years to fix the mess we have been gradually creating over the 200,000 years us humans have been around. As bleak as that may sound,…
Runner-up of the Hilary Term 2020 Schools’ Writing Competition Rulan Zhang, Year 12, Berkshire Stephen Hawking, arguably the greatest physicist of our time once said: ‘I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet….
Runner-up of the Hilary Term 2020 Schools’ Writing Competition Sri Kousthubha Allampalli, Year 13, Surrey 16th July 1969. The date of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission, during which mankind finally made its mark on the moon. A memorable moment for all, and a source of inspiration for many of the aspiring astronauts out…
Winner of the Hilary Term 2020 Schools’ Writing Competition Louis Rush, Year 12, Yorkshire To remain or to migrate is just another iteration of the fight or flight dilemma. Society is under stress, but we have protesters in our streets instead of adrenaline in our veins. By the next decade, we will certainly have to…
Brazilian scientists have recorded the highest-ever Antarctic temperature. At midday on 9 February, air temperature at the Marambio research base hit 20.75ᵒC. This is the first time that a temperature exceeding 20ᵒC has been recorded anywhere within the Antarctic climate zone – the area further than 60 degrees south of the equator. Marambio is located…
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”. 25 years on, this quote from Jurassic Park by the great Jeff Goldblum rings truer than ever. While every great scientific advancement experiences some level of discussion and controversy, no field attracts more debate than that…
Bitcoin – it is everywhere. Last year was the tenth anniversary of the famous Bitcoin whitepaper by “Satoshi Nakamoto”, but the future of cryptocurrencies remains uncertain as it is shrouded in skepticism and a lack of familiarity outside of the tech community. However, Bitcoin’s underpinning technology, blockchain, has a rather more optimistic outlook. In a…
At 5:03 CET on Monday 10th February, a NASA Atlas V4 11 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying with it ESA’s aptly named latest mission: Solar Orbiter. Within an hour, the spacecraft detached from the rocket, and began flying solo, carefully guided by a team on the ground in Germany. Since then, the…
