Showing results by author "Andrew May" in All Categories

The possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the most profound subjects that human beings can ponder. Astrophysicist Andrew May gives an expert overview of our current state of knowledge, looking at how life started on Earth, the tell-tale ‘signatures’ it produces and how such signatures might be detected elsewhere in the solar system or on the many ‘exoplanets’ now being discovered by the Kepler and TESS missions.

Mars is back. Suddenly everyone - from Elon Musk to Ridley Scott to Donald Trump - is talking about going to the Red Planet. When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However NASA’s Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot. The much-anticipated crewed mission failed to materialise, defeated by a combination of technological and political challenges.

As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with an asteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only in the last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by just such an impact. Now the science community is making up for lost time, with worldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and plans for high-tech hardware that could deflect an incoming object from a collision course - a procedure depicted in several Hollywood movies.

Miss Rosamund Smythe is finding the Marriage Mart a dead bore. She’d much rather continue working for her father as a spy than endure another minute of the Season. But things take an interesting turn when she overhears details of a plot against her childhood friend and first love. A family feud drove them apart years ago, but he still holds a special place in her heart, and she won’t let anyone hurt him—not now, not ever.

Mischief is afoot in Mayfair. Binge the entire series at once. Anything is possible with a spying debutante, a duke, and a conspiracy.

Even before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, private companies were exploiting space via communication satellites - a sector that is seeing exponential growth in the internet age. In human spaceflight, too, commercialisation is making itself felt. Billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have long trumpeted plans to make space travel a possibility for ordinary people and those ideas are inching ever closer to reality.

After almost becoming a pawn in a villain's schemes, Lady Anne is firming her backbone and grasping independence. But that doesn't change the fact that she needs to make an advantageous marriage to pull her family out of destitution. Confirmed bachelor, Wesley Dunbar, Viscount of Bracondale, is furious when he learns of her involvement in the plot against his best friend. But he's also mesmerized by Anne's transformation from a country duckling to a fierce and beautiful swan.

This entertaining account, offering a plethora of little known facts and insights from previously classified military projects, shows how the real-world science of the Cold War followed in the footsteps of SF - and how the two together changed our perception of both science and scientists, and paved the way to the world we live in today.

People are used to seeing "fake physics" in science fiction - concepts like faster-than-light travel, antigravity, and time travel to name a few. The fiction label ought to be a giveaway, but some SF writers - especially those with a background in professional science - are so adept at "technobabble" that it can be difficult to work out what is fake and what is real. To confuse matters further, Isaac Asimov's 1948 piece about the fictitious time-traveling substance thiotimoline was written, not as a short story, but in the form of a spoof research paper.

Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavors that have little in common with academic science, beyond the superficial trappings of jargon and subject matter. The most obvious difference between the two is that pseudoscience is presented as fact, not fiction. This engaging and well-researched audiobook explores a wide range of intriguing similarities and differences between pseudoscience and the fictional science found in SF.

During her second Season, Lady Elizabeth Castleton is found in a compromising situation with Lord Justice Sinclair, the Earl of Heath. Despite her attraction to him, she is dismayed to find herself betrothed to the man who is rumored to have killed his first wife. Her parents refuse to lend credence to the rumors, so she is soon married and on the way to her husband’s estate. She cannot decide what to make of the handsome earl but after an attempt is made on her life, Elizabeth is terrified that history is about to repeat itself.

A podcast about all things human performance. Listen in as Andrew May explores the latest in human performance with an all-star cast of subject matter experts covering physical and psychological wellbeing, performance psychology, sport, business, entertainment, the performing arts, leadership, and science. Learn valuable lessons that can be applied to optimising performance in your personal and professional life. Performance Intelligence applies to the way we turn up in relationships and the way we turn up at work, it applies to the way we perform in front of 10,000 people and the way we ...

Over 50 years ago, astronomers launched the world's first orbiting telescope. This allowed them to gaze further into outer space and examine anything that appears in the sky above our heads, from comets and planets to galaxy clusters and stars. Since then, almost 100 space telescopes have been launched from Earth and are orbiting our planet, with 26 still active and relaying information back to us. In Eyes in the Sky, science writer Andrew May takes us on a journey into space.

This is a Canadian social media podcast. We focus on Influencers, News, Events, Break out influencers, and much more! We will be talking with some of the largest influencers to come out of Canada and ask them how it was growing their following in a country so behind in the social media industry.