Notebook from the North

For this week’s plog we will be following the cold theme and looking at ice ages. The words “Ice Age” may make you think of mammoths and sabre tooth tigers wandering around a little over 10,000 years ago (or of a Disney movie with a rather wonderful sabre tooth squirrel). However, this recent age of… Read more

It is many people’s wish and dream to one day see the Northern Lights. They are, after all, a wonder of nature that have captivated people for centuries. These lights, also occurring in the south of the planet, are not only beautiful, they are also a connection between us and space beyond our little planet,… Read more

You may have heard of North Pole (yay Arctic), you may have heard of the South Pole (go Antarctic!), but have you ever heard of the Third Pole? This week we will be stepping out of the Arctic and exploring the nature and science of a somewhat similar place, the third pole, which is found… Read more

Scientist quite like classifying stuff, and literally all living things on the planet are no exception. This is done through taxonomy, which in biology is simply the scientific organisation of all living, and once-living but now extinct, things. Our current system of taxonomy has, with some changes, existed since the 1700s, originating with botanist and… Read more

Time for another animal spotlight, and this week, it’s the moose! Sadly in my research I discovered meese is definitely not the plural of moose… it’s just moose, like sheep and sheep. Despite the sad loss of this wonderful word, there are lots of interesting and often unexpected bits of life history connected to these… Read more

Fossil fuels eh? Awful! Scourge of humanity! But… what are they? And why are they so bad? Should we stop using them straight away? And what does a fern have to do with any of this? As always the answers aren’t always simple, but some of them are quite interesting. This week we will be… Read more