Henderson unfurled his towel over the sparkling sands, stretched out luxuriously under a cobalt sky, and sighed. Fitting compensation for a hectic year of research, they'd said. Just get out there and relax. Think of anything but science for once. / The rhythmic collapse of waves on the shore was reminiscent of something in quantum mechanics. I'll bet the sand is mainly tectosilicates, he thought, probably alpha-quartz. The towel was cotton, and his trunks were Rayon, produced he recalled by acetylation of cellulose. Cobalt blue probably represents a range of wavelengths centered somewhere between 420 and 460 nanometres.. / Henderson's right hand idly toyed with the portable Dobson Spectrophotometer before he raised it to his eye for another look. No doubt about it, he thought, concentrations of ozone over this part of the beach are higher than elsewhere.. .

After you.. No, after you.. / Please - Be my guest.. / Thank you, gracious host. You're too kind.. // Deferential equations

"Sure been a heap more work for ME around here since those Biologists got granted research time on the ol' Supercollider.."

Add the puppies. / Throw in the intern. // After years of experimentation, scientists remain dubious about whether there really is such a thing as the Cute Particle.

Astrophysics made simple

"Bravo Professor, you stumbled upon the one fact that makes sense of it all. Unfortunately humanity is not permitted to know that the Universe was designed by a committee of ducks."

If all children are natural-born scientists, society might be wise to at least quarantine the subset of these scientist-infants who are the atomic weapons specialists, before they kill us all with their crazy little lunchbox nukes.

The only reason that 'children are our future' is that we don't send enough adults on round trips through deep-space at relativistic speeds. / (Hi kids - we're back!!) / Once we start doing that, children will become a lot less complacent, because there's a good chance that by the time we get back they'll be old enough to be our grandparents.

Fluffy, the "Galileo of the Lemmings," with his stopwatch.

Yes I agree that we've reached the magnetic North Pole. What I'm unsure about is whether anyone has previously noticed this bloody great solenoid..!?

At a resolution of 10-24 metres, isolated clumps of strange matter pop briefly out of the quantum foam to debate the possible existence of particle physicists.

Physics at the farm: discovery of the muon.

Discovery of Crime Waves

The radiocarbon dating technique

Time flies when you're having fun

Mr Smith, the jury finds you guilty of breaking two Laws of the Land. It has also not escaped my own attention that you are also breaking at least one Law of Physics.

Pius-131 / John Paul-192 / Benedict-238 / Gregory-239 (Soon after holding a Critical Mass) / Radioactive Isopopes

The black cat sat on the mat. ..In front of the fire / His perfect black surface was absorbing ALL the heat of the fire. .. / ALL the heat from the room. ..ALL the heat from the house. .. / Brrrrr!! Why's it so COLD in here..?!? / MWA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA. ..!!!

"Call that a BIG BANG, eh God..? Why, back home in Texas. .."

Stow this crate of fundamental forces in the hold, fasten the lifeboats, secure the deck, and hoist the sails. .. / A Higgs Bosun

Where am I..? Or what is my momentum..? Or where am I..? / Oh hell! Why worry about all that again? I'm not even sure if I'm a wave or a particle! / Photon self-identity issues

A boy in a not-quite parallel Universe left a ball of string sitting around. A dog started to gnaw at it, but then knocked it through a crack in the pavement and in to our solar system, where it was the size of a planet, and made of superstring..! / Astronomers saw it approaching and excitedly held press-conferences. People laughed and joked at first, but then grew fearful, because it looked as if the ball was on a collision course with Earth! / As it turned out, the ball passed very close to Earth but missed us. It passed right between us and the Moon. People laughed again and took photos as the ball moved off into the distance of space. .. / Unfortunately, a trailing strand snagged some outcrops on the Moon, and the thread started to unravel as the ball moved further away. As the moon orbited the earth, it began to wind us up with progressively more thread! / All the string in the stratosphere meant that sunsets were quite pretty at first, but soon our light was blocked out, and then the three inner planets all got tangled up with the sun, and we all died. / Which was a real pity, because the giant dog came after the ball, and he was really worth seeing. .. / Moral: be careful where you leave your string.

I'm hit! I'm hit! I've lost an electron!! / Are you sure?? / I'm positive!! / Another casualty in the War of the Atoms

Meanwhile, at the Home for Old Atoms. .. / "When I was young I was an atom of uranium-238. I felt so alive, so dangerous! Then one day I accidentally ejected an alpha particle. Now look at me - a spent old atom of lead-206. All my life since then has been nothing but decay, decay, decay. .."

During the quieter periods, Lance and the boys would while away the hours by flicking bungee-bands at passing aircraft.

Human Evolution: Possible Futures / Number 1: Happy Fat People

"You thought they were free, didn't you Jimmy..? Well, NOTHING in this Universe is really free, Jimmy, NOTHING. We want payment for the steak-knives. .."

30 JUNE 1908 / Nicola Tesla during the time of the Siberian "Tunguska Event"

"Keep an eye on Davies. Whatever he's doing, it's not accounting."

. ..and the precise value of the Hubble Constant is critical to the question of whether our Universe will continue to expand forever, or.. . / POP!

You know how the Universe is receding away from us at an accelerating rate? / Uh..huh? / As if a powerful force is stretching the very fabric of spacetime? / "Dark Energy" / Yeah. Well I've just figured out what that is. / Yeah right, Melvin..! / Imagine you're on a beach, and a TSUNAMI TROUGH arrives. What happens first? / All the water is sucked out to sea..? / Mmmm. Well it seems that a huge higher-dimensional ENERGY-WAVE is rapidly sweeping in through our cosmological horizon. .. / You mean..? / Yup..! It turns out that so-called "Dark Energy" is nothing more complex than spacetime drawback caused by the COSMIC TSUNAMI OF DEATH. ..

A Cosmic Tsunami of Death..? That's ridiculous..! / Such a huge energy-wave would need an IMPOSSIBLY massive external event to set it off! There's NO PRECENDENT! / Give me just ONE EXAMPLE of a huge flood of mass-energy suddenly appearing out of nowhere! / Hmmm. You mean like some sort of "BIG BANG"..?

It was after August but before September when Herbert left for outer space. Technically naive, he left without a spaceship. Always forgetful, he forgot about gravity.