Ascent

Toyota say they think they have developed a way to manufacture small, solid-state batteries that would enable a car to do 1000km on a 10 minute charge; they say they expect to have them on sale in 2027. Toyota have a history of over-promising and under-delivering, but even so, it makes you think. When that is possible, the idea that everyone needs a charging point on their street goes away. The challenge of installing the infrastructure becomes significantly smaller; the objections of the doubters look less credible. I hope it's true

Somehow the expanding universe keeps coming up. Today there is an announcement that astronomers have looked at galaxies so far away that the 'light' from them began it's journey in the first billion years of time. They have also shown that the speed at which time is apparently passing in the events that they observe there is about one fifth of the rate at which time actually passes. This is the result that Einstein predicted in his seminal work on space-time, but which has never been fully confirmed by observations before. Seeing is believing

It has been a grey, cold, wet autumnal day - in stark contrast to what the forecasters promised the night before. All plans to visit the apiary were deferred. I went out and took some pictures that I thought would look OK in greyscale, to chime with the weather. It pleased me that I have two that I can put under the same title. I thought the two bits of news were little steps up as well