Food for Thought; the Future of Global Food?

A global food shortage may not appear to be a threat or worry for a lot of people; around half a billion have been diagnosed as obese, that’s 1 in 14 people worldwide^[1]. However, with an estimated 1 in 9 people being malnourished, in many countries the threat is already a reality. Though numbers predicted vary, the global population was agreed to have breached 7 billion people by 2012^[2]. Most estimates point to another 2 billion people on the planet by the middle of the century. To put that increase into perspective, when we reached the first billion by 1804 it took around 156 years to add 2 billion. At our current rate of growth, an addition of the same number again will happen more than five times faster.

The prevalence of malnourishment and obesity across the globe, and the disparity between the two. South-east African countries appear most malnourished, whilst levels of obesity rose in almost every country last year. Image credits: Undernourishment by country (top) via wikimedia [CC BY-SA 3.0], obesity by country (bottom) from Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]

New Horizons - The Mysteries of Pluto Unveiled

At 9pm on July 14^th 2015, the NASA New Horizons mission team received a very important phone call..

New Horizons had completed the first ever flyby of Pluto. It took over nine years and three-billion miles to complete, but has finally given us our first detailed glimpse of the ex-planet at the end of the solar system. It looks like Pluto was definitely worth investigating.

The New Horizons space probe has been designed to function with a minimal power input. It required less than 200 Watts of Power to reach Pluto - that’s less than a pair of light bulbs. Compared to a grand piano in size, New Horizons weighs just 478 kilograms^[1]. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The Impossible Quasar at the Dawn of the Universe

The recent extraordinary discovery of the biggest and brightest quasar of the early universe has intrigued astronomers worldwide. The reason behind this? The quasar - SDSS J010013.02+280225.8 (affectionately nick-named J0100+2802), is far larger than current black hole theories predict it should be^[1].

Among the oldest and brightest entities in the universe, quasars eject jets of very bright light that can be seen from lightyears away. It was initially believed that different events were being seen when quasars were observed, but it was later established that our line of sight affected the appearance of the quasar, for example a blazar is a quasar with jets that are pointing towards Earth. Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser