Geiger counters used to be fairly big and bulky devices, but today can be handheld like this one or even downloaded as an app on a smartphone. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
If you re a fan of vintage science fiction and horror flicks such as the 1984 film C.H.U.D., you re used to getting a chill down your spine whenever characters point a boxy gadget into the darkness and are alerted to the presence of some yet-unseen radioactive monster by an ominous clicking sound.
Geiger counters are such a familiar prop in old movies, in fact, that you d be forgiven for assuming that they re either an invention that exists only in the minds of screenwriters, or else that they re an obsolete technology that went out of fashion when people stopped building atomic bomb shelters in their backyards.
Saddleworth Parish Council is taking forward plans to give Uppermill-born physicist Albert Wood OBE a blue plaque.
The plaque will mark Mr Wood s incredible achievements in helping to develop sonar – and thus saving thousands - if not millions - of lives during the second world war.
Local resident Roy Crozier brought the proposal to the Council, having read about the physicist in the newsletter of the Saddleworth Historical Society.
The Council is now investigating the exact location of his place of birth on Pickhill in Uppermill, and looking at options for where to locate a blue plaque and more information on the physicist.
Centuries from now, 2021 will be celebrated as an anniversary year most noted for getting rid of 2020. It will be less remembered as a year featuring a diverse roster of scientific anniversaries, ranging from the 1300th birthday of a prolific writer to the 25th birthday of a celebrity sheep.
Nevertheless, before too much of 2021 passes by, it’s time to name the Top 10 anniversaries worthy of celebration this year some obscure, some fairly famous, and one that had an unfair advantage helping to make it No. 1.
10. Elizabeth Blackwell, 200th birthday
Born in England in 1821, Blackwell moved with her family to New York in 1832 and a few years later to Ohio, where she became a teacher in a boarding school. After the death of a close friend she began applying to medical schools, acquiring a bunch of rejections until Geneva College sent her an acceptance letter (apparently the faculty sought input from the school’s students, and they voted to accept her as a joke). But she showed u
IMAGINE an atom: like a miniature solar system with the nucleus in the centre and electrons orbiting around like planets.
Although the picture is familiar, analogies like this can mislead. New research published in Science last week by a team largely based in Darmstadt, Germany, emphasises that the atom is far stranger than our simple images. We still have much to learn about its inner citadel: the nucleus.
The discovery of the atomic nucleus is a little over a century old. Earlier ideas about the atoms imagined them like tiny billiard balls.
Then, in the early 20th century, the atom was proposed to be a sort of positively charged spongy material, with negatively charged electrons dotted throughout.