Science

Ashwell is a small village with a deep history.

We take so much for granted, but sometimes, it is fascinating to look back to try and find out about transitions long before writing helped our inquiries.

Last Sunday was the winter solstice, the year’s longest night and one of the best times to see the bright heart of our Milky Way arching across the southern sky.

In September, 89 AD, three Roman legions were destroyed at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

Last Friday night I spent several hours photographing the aurora.

In 1961, I spent the summer in Macedonia, excavating a Neolithic village occupied about 8000 years ago.

George Eliot wrote that if we could truly perceive the fullness of ordinary life, it would be like hearing the grass grow.

I was recently asked to name the world’s largest bee. This giant is Megachile pluto.

It strikes me as quietly ridiculous, sitting in Middlemarch with a telescope barely bigger than a coffee mug, peering 60 million light-years into the dark.

I learnt a new word this week. It is not a poetic word, not one that rolls off the tongue or finds its way easily into a sentence. It sounds more like something you would scrape off a laboratory...

The discovery of DNA has had a massive impact on our understanding of human evolution.

A tendency to aggression and antisocial behaviour is encoded in certain people’s DNA, argues Kathryn Paige Harden — and it could have profound implications for crime and punishment.

Tiny telescope, big discoveries.

How do you reconstruct the diet of prehistoric people?

Liquid gypsum is used today to improve the quality of clay soil, but in Roman times, it had a quite different application.

Autumn has arrived in Middlemarch.

Every now and then an astronomer finds themselves asking a question that sounds faintly ridiculous but is, in fact, perfectly reasonable.

As I am writing this it is International Women’s Day, and how appropriate to look back on the many contributions that women have made to understanding our human past.