If you really want to know, Phil Plait has done the maths. Read the full article on his Discover blog by clicking here.

Damn. The BBC are reporting that Arthur C Clarke just died in Sri Lanka, aged 90. Along with Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven, he was one of the first science fiction writers I ever read. I remember reading a copy of his collection ‘Of Time And Stars’ in the school library at an impressionable age.

For those who don’t know who he is, there’s an obituary here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2358011.stm

From Cosmos magazine:

“A spectacular, rotating binary star system is a ticking time bomb, ready to throw out a searing beam of high-energy gamma rays – and Earth may be right in the line of fire.”

From the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (and reported on Futurismic):

“The diameter of the tenuous dust atmosphere of the comet was measured at 1.4 million kilometers (0.9 million miles) on 2007 November 9 by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. They used observations from a wide-field camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), one of the few professional instruments still capable of capturing the whole comet in one image. Other astronomers involved in the UH program to study the comet include Bin Yang, Nuno Peixinho and David Jewitt. The present eruption of comet Holmes was first reported on October 24 and has continued at a steady 0.5 km/sec (1100 mph) ever since. The comet is an unprecedented half a million times brighter than before the eruption began. This amazing eruption of the comet is produced by dust ejected from a tiny solid nucleus made of ice and rock, only 3.6 km (roughly 2.2 miles) in diameter.”

I drove on the M5 through some of the worst affected areas of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire on Saturday. I was on a rescue mission, to collect my mum from Birmingham after her train had been cancelled. And it was like driving through a scene from a distaster movie – the hard shoulder was littered with abandoned and broken down cars; the rain lashed down and the waters either side of the road were rising; rescue helicopters circled overhead; the southbound lanes were jammed for mile after mile; the service areas had run out of petrol; and the radio kept repeating its warning not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

It took six and a half hours to complete the round trip – a journey that should have taken half that time. But we were lucky: some people spent thirteen hours trapped on the motorway overnight.

My computer suffered a major failure on Friday. Luckily I had all my writing backed up on a memory stick – otherwise I would’ve lost everything. I’m writing this on a borrowed laptop. Please bear with me. I’ll post again when normal service is resumed…

In the meantime, I just watched ‘A Scanner Darkly’ starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, based on the Philip K Dick novel of the same name. Good film – I enjoyed it. It reminded me of my university days.

“Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight…” Read the full story on the BBC website.