Like the plot of a movie, a team of students from across the Faculty of Science and Engineering have overcome some serious odds to claim victory at an international space probe competition in Texas. The fourth annual American Astronautical Society CanSat Competition took place at Tarleton State University; with a team from The University of…
‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ could prove itself more science lesson than nursery rhyme thanks to a new discovery. For the first time, diamonds far smaller than grains of sand have been observed shimmering around stars. But this discovery is more a case of A Touch of Frost than Frost of London, as it’s allowed a…
As part of my work at the Dalton Cumbrian Facility, I had the opportunity to visit Chernobyl last month. There are few people working in the nuclear industry who don’t know what happened at the power plant near the town of Pripyat, in what is now the Ukraine, 32 years ago this week. For those…
In this new series of blogs, we chat to the academics you’ll meet, be taught by and work with during your time in the School of Mathematics. In this post, we catch up with Chair in Statistics Professor Korbinian Strimmer. We asked him about his work and what he gets up to when he can…
A team of postgrads from The University of Manchester have emerged victorious from an international competition, thanks to the creation of a 3D-printed bionic limb. They hope soon to make the design available to the public without charge. What started as (and remains) a final year Mechanical Engineering Master’s project has resulted in Alex Agboola-Dobson…
It’s the ultimate 90s movie mash-up – Arachnophobia meets Jurassic Park. And it’s happened in real life, right here at the University of Manchester. Imprisoned within a block of amber dating back to the Cretaceous period, a spider has been discovered that could provide an unparalleled insight into the evolution of everyone’s favourite creepy-crawly. And…
I work in a place where robots roam the hallways, chemists explore radioactive materials and physicists work with the world’s most powerful dual-beam particle accelerator. Located between the Irish Sea and the beautiful Lake District National Park, the Dalton Cumbrian Facility is a satellite site for the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute. It is…
As if they weren’t content with desalinating seawater, filtering the colour from whisky and creating a new rubber for running shoes, graphene scientists have now used the 2D advanced material to mimic photosynthesis – and the potential of this breakthrough could be interstellar. Researchers led by Professor Sir Andre Geim (yes, the very same man…
Who can resist an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show when it’s a DNA results special? Well, here at The University of Manchester, we’ve just wrapped up our own DNA mystery – and the result was just as shocking. As is a popular theme on the ITV chat show, the question we wanted to answer…
