The struggles and triumphs of a mission to Ecuador to determine the shape of the Earth — In 1735, a team of French and Spanish scientists set sail on a mission organised by the French Academy of Sciences to settle a debate between Isaac Newton and René Descartes, and discover whether the circumference of the Earth was greater around the equator or around the poles. …

How SABRE aims to reveal the source of the DAMA collaboration’s mysterious signal — Dark matter makes up roughly 85% of the matter in the Universe. Although we are unable to see it, as it does not interact with light, observing its gravitational effects on objects such as galaxies and galaxy clusters provides us with evidence for its existence. Without the extra mass due…

How NASA’s Deep Space Network keeps contact with distant spacecraft — After reading about how the Deep Space Network (DSN) will be used to communicate with the James Webb Space Telescope at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point following its launch planned for 2021, I wanted to learn more about this worldwide network of facilities and how its three locations were chosen…

How LIGO uses laser interferometry to detect gravitational waves — The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was designed to detect the cosmic gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity to propagate from accelerated masses. The experiment is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (who have so far invested roughly $1.1 …

How the James Webb Space Telescope will observe the early universe from its home at the second Lagrange point — The James Webb Space Telescope, often referred to as “Webb”, is a space-based observatory, named after the second administrator of NASA, that aims to expand upon the discoveries made by the Hubble Space Telescope. It will have a much larger primary mirror than Hubble, allowing it to collect more light…

How the unique properties of the South Pole allow the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the elusive particles — Neutrinos are invisible, electrically neutral and nearly massless subatomic particles. Since they travel through the Universe at close to the speed of light without being absorbed or deflected by cosmic objects, neutrinos can provide us with information to further our understanding of their mysterious origins in processes such as supernovae…

How Eratosthenes calculated his surprisingly accurate value for the Earth’s circumference — After writing about some of the most exciting current and future experiments around the world, I decided to look all the way back to around 240 B.C., when Eratosthenes became the first person to measure the circumference of the Earth. …

Constructing the Square Kilometre Array in South Africa and Australia — The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a proposed international radio telescope project. Rather than being a single telescope, the SKA is a collection of different antennas working together, known as an array, which would have a total collecting area of over 1 km². …