Author Archives: John Pullen

Marconi is probably best remembered for the company he set up under his name. And because of the high profile of this company, many people believe he invented the radio. But in fact, he worked on it with Karl Ferdinand Braun and they together received the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics.     Marconi was bornContinue reading “Marconi – Radio Head”

Most people could not envisage their life without a television being somewhere in there. Today there are many ways to download programmes but it was Baird who was to demonstrate the first working model.     He was born in Helensburgh in Scotland on the 14th August 1888 and after being educated in local schools, enteredContinue reading “John Logie Baird – A Television First”

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was a writer of many books but he will always be remembered for the creation of one of the best-known characters in fiction, the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. Conan-Doyle was born in Edinburgh on the 22nd May 1859, the second of ten children.     He entered Edinburgh Medical School and graduated someContinue reading “Detectives, Dinosaurs & Fairies – the Life of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle”

As the dwarf planet of Pluto is left behind, we are already within the next region of the Solar System; the Kuiper Belt. It begins just outside the orbit of Neptune and encompasses the orbit of Pluto. The Kuiper Belt is a flat disc consisting of rocks and ice boulders of many sizes. They varyContinue reading “Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud – the Edge of the Solar System”

As stated in an earlier article, Pluto has been relegated to the status of a dwarf planet. But many people still think of it as an object of importance which deserves its own section. I tend to agree with them so I have included it as part of this series of blog articles.     HavingContinue reading “Pluto – The Planet that Isn’t”

The next object we find in this series as we move out far beyond Uranus is the planet Neptune. Since 2006 when Pluto lost its status as a fully-fledged planet, Neptune assumed the role of the last planet in our Solar System. It is also the last of the gas giants and measures 30,760 milesContinue reading “Neptune – the Final Outpost?”

In this article we journey further out into the Solar System and we are leaving our Sun far, far behind. The heat and light received from it is now very weak. This makes the temperature of the cloud layer we observe as we approach the next planet an extremely cold minus 214º Celsius. We haveContinue reading “The Blue Planet – But not Earth”

Saturn is the one planet almost everyone will recognise. And what is it that makes it stand out? It is its ring system orbiting the planet. But before we talk about the rings, let’s first discuss the planet itself. Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system and it is over 886 millionContinue reading “Saturn – a Rare Beauty in the Solar System”

Everything about Jupiter is big, very big. It is the first of the gas giants and next to the Sun, it is the largest object in the solar system with a diameter of just under 88,850 miles. If you were to lump all the other planets together, Jupiter would still be over 2.5 times biggerContinue reading “Jupiter – The King of Planets”

Between Mars and Jupiter is a region of space we call the Asteroid Belt. It consists of millions of rocks of all sizes, from the microscopic to the very large. And like the planets, they orbit the Sun. But what is an asteroid?     Quite simply, it is a lump of rock floating in space.Continue reading “Asteroid Belt – Mass Extinction or Not?”