I started a little experiment of my own this spring. I wanted to find an easy way of sowing seeds for growing vegetables at home. I have a small veggie patch, but I worked out last year that I could grow a lot more, if only I had many more seedlings to plant out.
But sowing seeds can be a bit fiddly, and then you’ve got to plant out each tiny plant. That takes a lot of time. I wanted more veggies for less work, so I collected as many egg boxes as I could find, and sowed seeds into each egg holder. The pictures show the planting and growing on of broad beans, but I have also used the egg boxes for runner beans, radishes, beetroots, spinach, tomatoes, rocket, pak choi and patty pans.
And it’s not too late to start growing your own right now. You don’t even need a veggie patch in the garden; plant the egg boxes into a pot or container for your window sill or patio.
You might know about the very important work the Red Cross does all over the world to help people in a crisis. Wherever there is war or natural disaster, their familiar symbol can be seen on flags above makeshift hospitals and parcels of emergency food supplies.
You probably know less, though, about the brave and generous individuals who dedicate their lives to the Red Cross. These people work tirelessly to help those in need and seek no recognition for what they do, but recently we came across the story of a real-life heroine that more people need to know about.
Most scientists believe that the Universe began in a Big Bang around 14 billion years ago. The entire Universe was inside a bubble thousands of times smaller than a pinhead, and was hotter and denser than anything we can imagine.
When the explosion called the Big Bang happened, the Universe as we know it was born. In a fraction of a second, the Universe grew from smaller than a single atom to larger than a galaxy. It kept on growing, and is still expanding today.
Now researchers in America think they have found traces left in the sky that prove this that the Big Bang did really happen. It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes. These twists of light are called ‘gravitational waves’ – the effect is a little bit like how waves form on the surface when you drop a big stone in a pond. However, you also have to imagine that the Big Bang formed the pond itself.
The team leading the project, known as BICEP2, has been using a telescope at the South Pole to make detailed observations of a small patch of sky. The aim was to find evidence of ‘inflation’ – the idea that the cosmos grew rapidly in its first trillionth, or trillionth of a trillionth of a second – growing from something unimaginably small to something about the size of a marble.
The leader of the team, Prof John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said:
“This is opening a window on what we believe to be a new regime of physics – the physics of what happened in the first unbelievably tiny fraction of a second in the Universe.”
Over the coming years, scientists will work hard to investigate every aspect of this discovery. Other experiments will be carried out to see if they can replicate the findings of the American team. If this research is confirmed, it will be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our time.
EDIT
Dr Sarah Bearchell drew our attention to this video, which explains the concept of gravity and gravitational waves with the help of a towel, an apple and a ping pong ball. Check it out
In the second of a series of articles on health, pharmacist and writer Asha Fowells looks at threadworms. This may make you go ‘euuuuuw’, but it is an important thing to know about, because while threadworms are icky, they are reasonably easy to treat.
The term “parasitic infection” may make you think of intrepid explorers in rainforests and jungles, but there is one parasite that lurks much closer to home: threadworm.
Is there a Lollipop Man or Woman on your road to school? Do you know his or her name?
When I take my children to school, we walk if we can, because the parking situation near the school is a bit difficult. On our way we cross the road where the Lollipop Man stands guard.
He isn’t particularly talkative, but is friendly and helpful. It has been warm these past days, and still he stands, in his reflective jacket and ear-muffed reflective hat. I am waiting for him to take the hat off, he must be sweltering under there. Perhaps he has a lighter hat in his cupboard, which doesn’t get worn until summer.
