- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
I recently caught an episode of the new BBC epic documentary series Earth. It tells the story of our planet - from the early solar system to the present day. That’s a lot of ground to cover. The episode I stumbled upon looked at the emergence of land plants - and the potentially planet-ending series of events they might yet lead to.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
In the 1990s the UK had four TV channels, five or six flavours of crisp (chip) and three flavours of ice cream - vanilla, strawberry and chocolate. Now in the 2020s, potential options have ballooned 100-fold. There are 480 terrestrial TV channels,1 from ‘Aaj Tak’ to ‘Zing’ - with near infinite streaming on top. Meanwhile, Crisp Nation2 provides names for more than 600 branded crisp products - that it is aware of - from ‘Parsnip & Manuka Honey’ to ‘Guinness Rich Beef Chilli.’ I couldn’t find an equivalent ice cream list, but one can now sample ‘Cloudwater Chocolate Stout’ ice cream and ‘Seaweed Sorbet,’ which looks as unappetising as it sounds.3
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
I recently bought a magazine with a picture of John F Kennedy on it. He was artificially aged to his mid- 60s with the words ‘What if...’ writ large above him. It was a striking image. I liked the premise and almost ran with it to the check-out. I had chanced upon What if... Book of Alternative History, which asks historians to imagine plausible alternative timelines in which major events are altered at a single ‘fork in the road.’ It makes for an interesting series of thought experiments.
- Written by Peter Edwards, Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
I recently came across ‘Guitar Zero,’ a book by Gary Marcus about whether musicians are born or raised. It follows the author’s own experience of learning to play the guitar - a lifelong dream - at the ‘grand old age’ of 38. Despite trying and failing many times before, Marcus applies his expertise as a cognitive scientist to work around his limitations, with great success. Along the way, he takes in detours into musical theory, popular psychology, teaching methods, the ageing process and the nature of music itself.
- Written by Peter Edwards, Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
In 2001 my school physics class went on a field trip to the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment close to Oxford, UK. That day, we learned that the JET condenses hydrogen nuclei and ‘bashes’ them together to produce helium. This is the reaction that takes place inside the sun and it produces a LOT of energy. However, the strong magnetic fields required to create stable plasmas at temperatures of up to 150,000,000°C - 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun - also consume a LOT of energy. Due to this, for the first 65 years of development, no fusion reactor produced more energy than it consumed. This, along with the high cost and extremely short lifespan of the refractories and other consumables used to contain a rotating swirl of plasma, as well as the sheer difficulty of the task itself, are just some of the major barriers to fusion becoming a viable source of energy. Hence the popular joke: Fusion is the power of the future... and always will be.
