Author Archives: John Pullen

How well do we know ourselves? Of course, we, as a species, are a very complicated subject. But there are several fundamental questions about who we are, why we look different and whether we are still evolving? Let’s try to shed some light on these questions. Most of us are aware of Charles Darwin’s workContinue reading “All About You”

Do not get worried that the Mars rover, Curiosity, has found giant spiders on the Red Planet or that David Bowie was right when he produced his album, “Spider From Mars”. Instead, it refers to a pretty interesting step forward in the search for past life on Mars. What Curiosity has found has been describedContinue reading “Mars Rover Discovers “Spiders From Mars””

We all know that boomerangs originate in Australia and were invented and used by the Aboriginal people probably thousands of years ago. But, do we? Several years ago, two that appear to be a pair of boomerangs were discovered not in Australia, but in Poland, Europe. And they were not made of wood but outContinue reading “A Mammoth of a Boomerang”

It is a question with no exact answer. In a personal capacity, in my days as a writer and director of non-fiction films and live shows, I had to link up the head of Egyptology at the British Museum in London to Cairo, the capital of Egypt. This was a worldwide celebration of the newContinue reading “How Old is Egypt?”

For many years, medical professionals have used the body mass index or BMI, to measure whether we are overweight or not. This is important as a high BMI can mean you are prone to many diseases and can lead to an early death. However, it has recently come under more and more scrutiny as toContinue reading “Is the Body Mass Index BMI Outdated?”

What a strange question, you may ask? Of course, colour exists. Just take a look around you. The sky is blue. The grass is green and almost everything else has a colour to it. But to discuss this in more detail, we have to understand what colour is and more importantly, how our brains decideContinue reading “Does Colour Exist?”

Over Christmas 1968, Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon. The command module pilot on this three-man mission was William Anders. Amongst all his other duties, he took an exceptional photograph. It has been calculated that more people have seen this than any other image of the Moon. It was entitledContinue reading “How the Moon is Helping in the Search for ET”

Two of the vital things we need to survive on our planet are Oxygen, which makes up about 21% of our atmosphere, and the Earth’s magnetic field. Oxygen, along with around 75% of nitrogen and tiny amounts of rare gases, allows us to breathe. If all of the atmosphere were made up of oxygen, theContinue reading “Oxygen and the Laws of Attraction”

It is often said, by Captain Kirk amongst others, that the final frontier is outer space. Another common saying is that we know more about the surface of the Moon than we know about the deep ocean floor. Both are true. But first, let us be clear on what we mean by the deep oceanContinue reading “The Final Frontier is Below You”

Many of us are aware of how mountains are formed over millions of years. The movement of tectonic plates beneath the surface of this planet can sometimes push upward and create mountain chains. Mount Everest and the Himalayas are a good example of this mechanism. However, things may not be as simple as we firstContinue reading “South Africa is Growing Up”