vivweb01

As a postscript to this rather 'off the wall' suggestion, it's obvious that this government is no further forward than the last at solving the small-boats problem, having ditched their Rwanda plan immediately on assuming office and not really putting anything more effective in its place.  The belated returns agreement with the French, trumpeted so enthusiastically earlier this year, has so far only managed to deport a handful of illegals, at least two of which have already tried their luck again via the same route (and those are just the ones Border Force have actually detected). The cost of each removal is estimated at £56k. All the more reason to let the 'marine experts' have a go - I'm sure they'd find a way to disable an outboard motor just as easily as a fishing boat's rudder ! I doubt whether many others would risk the trip in a dinghy after that.... AI seems to have let us down in finding a lasting solution to this perennial problem so far, so why...

  I first published this blog in February 2022, just before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Given the mess we seem to be making of our home planet at present, a look at the possibilities of life elsewhere might be appropriate....  A    report   last year of  the possibility of life existing on another planet in another solar system also presented a good opportunity for a fresh look at the question. This seems even more relevant now, given the increasingly fragile state of our planet's ecosystem and our own continuing descent into resource-driven conflict. Present indications suggest that our society may not have long left, and all in all,  perhaps it's a fitting time to consider whether there might be a possibility of alternative accommodation for humans elsewhere in the universe.... The combination of dimethyl sulphide (DMS), CO2 and methane in the atmosphere of  exoplanet K2-18b in significant quantities is seen as a possible 'biomarker' for life t...

  A couple of years ago I attempted to answer the question ' Are we alone in the universe '.  At risk of appearing to be a 'glutton for punishment',  I thought it would be useful to follow this up by looking at an even weightier and perhaps even more topical question - 'How did the universe start and how will it end ?'. There is a lot of argument about this currently, with the principal 'Big Bang' theory (BBT), until recently taken as gospel by cosmologists, now being challenged in the light of new evidence from the JWST. More evidence suggesting the presence of 'bio-signature' gases in the atmosphere of a 'nearby' (relatively speaking!) exoplanet has also caught the media's attention and promoted discussion about our place in the universe recently, thus re-igniting the debate. Another recent development was the observations on supernovae from DESI suggesting the universe may already have started contracting again. Read on for a short...