Latest news with #RoyalHolloway
News18
29-05-2025
- Science
- News18
Moon Drifting Away: Will Earth Have 25 Hour Days?
1/9 Our planet currently runs on a 24-hour day, which shapes our daily routines of work, rest, and recreation. But what if we had 25 hours in a day? While that may sound exciting, it's a change that only future generations, far into the future, might experience. Let's explore why. According to a report by The Times of India, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found that the Moon is drifting away from the Earth at a rate of approximately 3.8 centimetres per year. Though this fact has been known for some time, the long-term effects are now attracting more attention. According to experts, as the moon drifts further away, it will slow the Earth's rotation, eventually resulting in a 25-hour day. 3/9 Professor David Waltham, from Royal Holloway, University of London, explains that this is due to tidal forces gradually slowing the Earth's rotation. The Moon's gravitational pull creates tidal bulges on Earth, which act like a brake, slowly reducing the planet's spin. In turn, some of the energy lost by Earth is transferred to the Moon, causing it to slowly recede from us. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and referenced in a Times of India report, also offers insights into Earth's distant past. Around 1.4 billion years ago, when the Moon was significantly closer, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours. Since then, as the Moon has moved further away, the length of a day has gradually increased to the 24-hour cycle we know today. The moon plays a vital role in regulating our planet, especially in influencing ocean tides. When the moon is closer, it creates more powerful tidal waves, potentially even daily tsunamis. As it moves away, these tidal effects lessen. The gravitational interplay between the Earth and the moon keeps this balance in check. However, other planets, such as Mars and Jupiter, also exert gravitational pull on the moon, contributing to its continued drift. This change in distance directly affects how fast the Earth spins. The moon's gravitational force drives tidal waves, which help regulate the planet's rotation. As the moon retreats, its influence diminishes, leading to what scientists call "tidal acceleration" a gradual slowing of Earth's rotation, and a reduction in the height and frequency of tides. 7/9 During the Apollo missions, scientists installed reflectors on the lunar surface and used laser beams to measure the moon's distance precisely. These readings confirm the moon's steady movement away from Earth. At present, the Moon is on average about 384,400 kilometres from Earth and takes roughly 27.3 days to complete one orbit. Current estimates suggest that in around 200 million years, Earth could experience 25-hour days. While this shift doesn't currently impact our daily lives, researchers warn of potential future effects on climate, tides, and ecosystems. A longer day could alter our circadian rhythms, affect agriculture, and even disrupt natural behaviours in wildlife.
RTÉ News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Super Garden designer stuns with WB Yeats-inspired garden
The 16th series of beloved gardening competition Super Garden has returned to our screens on RTÉ One, with this week's episode introducing viewers to the final designer of this series, Rosie Alabaster. Watch back on RTÉ Player now Originally from Stamford in Lincolnshire, Rosie is now based in Kildare and has a keen interest in theatre. As well as working as a theatre designer for over 20 years, and teaching at Royal Holloway college, the 47-year-old wrote children's books as well as illustration and animation. Transitioning her love of design from the stage to the garden, Rosie is pursuing her MA in landscape architecture online with the University of Arts, Bournemouth. The course combines her two loves: plants and outdoor spaces. Rosie moved to Ireland three years ago as her husband's job relocated them. Her husband, Pascal, is originally from Leitrim, and together they have two children, Jack (13) and Meabh (11). Rosie is currently designing a small garden for a charity in the north inner city of Dublin, which provides education for teenage mums, asylum seekers and anyone in the surrounding community. On Super Garden, Rosie has been tasked with designing a garden for young couple Adrian and Gabriella, and their dog Leo. Merging her love for literature and the outdoors, Rosie came up with a strong concept that she hopes will take her to Bord Bia Bloom, a garden inspired by the poem by WB Yeats, Lake Isle of Innisfree. "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade." She planned to bring the lake from the poem to her garden with a large wildlife pond, which will be the most dominant feature of the design and something that is a first for Super Garden. Her concept included a reading nook, patio, dining area, and stone path. As impressive as these plans were, though, they didn't necessarily address the homeowners' request for making the space dog-friendly. And while Judge Monica Alvarez was impressed by Super Garden 's first pond, she was concerned that the rest of the garden took a little bit of a backseat. Judge Carol Marks noted that some of the trees were wilting in the summer heat, but Judge Brian Burke surmised that the design was a "bold" and "daring". In the end, with just three weeks and a €15,000 budget, Rosie delivered a unique garden that the homeowners were thrilled with.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Head of Royal Navy suspended pending investigation
The head of the Royal Navy has been suspended pending an investigation. Adm Sir Ben Key has been asked to 'step back' as first sea lord, sources at the MoD confirmed on Friday. Key was absent from the lineup of senior military personnel on the Mall on Monday for celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, and it is understood that second sea lord V Adm Martin Connell has taken full charge until a permanent replacement is announced. Earlier this week the MoD said Key had departed for 'private reasons'. Key joined the Royal Navy in 1984 as a university cadet, and graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London. As a junior officer he saw service around the world, after qualifying as helicopter aircrew and a principal warfare officer. He was made vice admiral in February 2016, before becoming the Royal Navy's fleet commander and later chief of joint operations until he was appointed first sea lord in 2021. Over his career, he has commanded four ships: the mine hunter HMS Sandown, the frigates HMS Iron Duke and HMS Lancaster, and the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. An Iraq war veteran, prior to taking over the Navy Key was also awarded a US bronze star and oversaw the retreat from Afghanistan. In his current role, he is also chief of the naval staff and chair of the navy board, where he is responsible to the secretary of state for the fighting 'effectiveness, efficiency and morale' of the service. Key last year issued an unreserved apology for 'intolerable' misogyny in the Submarine Service, after a series of investigations across the navy exposed sexual harassment, bullying and assault of women within its ranks. The navy chief said he was 'truly sorry' to the women who had suffered 'misogyny, bullying and other unacceptable behaviours' while serving their country. 'We must be better than this and do better than we have,' he said. The MoD said on Friday: 'An investigation is ongoing and it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.'
New Statesman
30-04-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Lawrence Newport: 'It's more than system failure – it's people failure'
Photographed by David Sandison for The New Statesman One spring afternoon in 2023, Lawrence Newport was out walking his dog in a local park in south London when he saw what he initially thought were two pit bull terriers hanging from a tree. He moved closer. 'They were triple the size of a pit bull and were gripping a branch,' Newport, who was working as a law lecturer at Royal Holloway, told me. 'But I knew from my law degree that pit bulls had been banned in Britain.' The ferocity of the dogs disturbed him and after returning home, he researched dog attacks in Britain, which he discovered had increased significantly since the pandemic. A disproportionate number of the attacks, including fatal attacks, which he plotted on a graph, were by the American Bully, also known as the XL Bully. The two dogs in the park were Bullies. On 6 June he published a Substack article provocatively headlined 'Why are so many children dying to dogs in the UK?'. The reason, he wrote, answering his own question, was the rise in the number of XL Bullies, which are known for their strength and stamina, and began arriving here in 2014. The article, in which he said Bullies should be banned, 'went viral'. He followed it by posting a video on the same theme on YouTube, after which he was contacted by a victim-support group. 'There were a lot of people who would speak in private but few would speak out publicly because they feared the consequences. I was persuaded to go public.' Newport became the de facto leader of the campaign to ban the XL Bully and shared research with special advisers he knew who worked in the Conservative government. The campaign developed momentum: on 1 February 2024 it became a criminal offence to own an XL Bully without a valid certificate of exemption. Newport felt vindicated, but there were personal costs. 'The entire academic and policy establishment is against you if you go public on something like this,' he said. 'And you receive direct threats from owners, from dog fighters.' For months he was subject to sustained online abuse and death threats. At one point, he and his family were advised by an off-duty police officer to leave London for several weeks because of fears over their safety. Royal Holloway received a daily stream of anonymous emails in which defamatory allegations were made against Newport. 'It was very intense and driven by pure emotive hatred. It really affects you and I hid away for nearly a year.' But he has returned and, having resigned his academic post at the end of 2023, Newport, 34, is leading two new campaigns: one dedicated to promoting economic growth, the other to 'crushing crime' (he also wants a cross-party inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal). He became interested in the criminal justice system because of the number of people he knew who'd had mobile phones or bikes stolen in London without any police action being taken. He is adept at using video and social media to popularise his campaigns and is encouraged that 'you can reach huge numbers of people online very easily and quickly'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe He has since become close to Dominic Cummings ('we bonded over campaigns and death threats'), whose political intuition he praises, and his work is being noticed inside the Labour government; I was first alerted to him by a senior adviser to a cabinet minister. In March, Newport – or Dr Lawrence Newport, as he calls himself on social media using the professional honorific (he has a PhD in history) – organised a cross-party event in Bristol on growth at which the speakers included Cummings, Chris Curtis, co-leader of the 110-strong Growth Group of Labour MPs, and Zia Yusuf, chair of Reform UK. In one sense, unlike Cummings, who in the early years of the coalition government worked as an adviser to Michael Gove at the Department of Education before leading the campaign for Brexit, Newport comes from nowhere. He was never part of the Westminster-policy-media-think-tank establishment or Oxbridge networks. He was an undergraduate at Kent University but suffered acutely from obsessive compulsive disorder and was encouraged by his mother to take a year out from his studies. He published a remarkable Substack post about exposure therapy and the long, slow, painful process of recovery. When I mentioned that I'd read and admired the piece he seemed surprised and moved. 'You are the first person to ask me about that,' he said. 'It was extremely bad. I was extremely thin at the time and not very well. When I came back to uni the next year, I wrote essays in the way I wanted, and didn't have any fear or worry. I'd literally battled things when I thought I was going to die, when I thought people I loved were going to die. I wanted to follow what I thought was true and not be held back. It was very freeing. And now I really don't like constraints because I spent years being truly constrained in a very bad way. It still crops up from time to time – such as when I was having the death threats – but nowhere near in the same way.' During our hour-long conversation, Newport repeatedly spoons sugar into several cups of tea and uses laughter as a form of nervous punctuation, especially when recounting periods of stress or trauma. Is he part of the ecosystem of the new online radical right, I asked. He replied by pointing out that his parents were Labour voters and his grandparents Brexiteers: 'Life's complicated!' Above all, he wants to challenge consensus and groupthink, and use data to sharpen public understanding of system failure. Newport aligns with Cummings – but also with Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's chief of staff – in his critique of state failure. 'Look at the justice system, look at policing, look at the courts, look at the prisons – there are a bunch of failures everywhere you look. Every part of the system is completely broken.' Newport cites the backlog in the courts, 'with people waiting three to four years for criminal trials', as an example of system failure. 'There was one day last November when a third of crown courts were shut! My mum said to me: 'Why can't the government just make the courts open?' That would make sense, but it's not happening. People are shocked when they hear the courts can choose to shut… If you try to nail down who is responsible, everyone can point to everyone else, and so no one is responsible.' McSweeney has said that many people in the country have had 'the hope beaten out of them': they no longer believe change for the better is even possible. 'It's about more than system failure,' Newport said. 'It's people failure as well. People are not brave enough, they're too constrained. They're not able to look at the world and ask: 'How do you fix this thing?' Instead, they think: 'How can I fix this thing in a way that my dinner parties would agree?' The whole Bully campaign was a lesson in: how do I get it to be high-status to talk about this issue?' If he is sceptical about the constraints of Westminster politics and what he describes as 'the failure of government to act on what people want', he believes in the potential of coordinated action. He mentions how the woke and environmental movements have influenced public policy. 'My view is if you build coordinated groups, you can change the vibe and suddenly it becomes high-status to talk about it at dinner parties.' You must take people's frustration and anger in a constructive direction because the alternative is dangerous, Lawrence Newport said. For now, he will continue his campaigns. 'In the end, I want to live in a country where things work, and my son is going to have a better life.' [See also: Why China is winning] Related
South Wales Argus
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
Novel set in wartime Wales to be released next month
The book, What We Left Behind, was written by Newport author Luisa A Jones and will be released on May 30. It follows the story of five evacuee children and their teacher from the poorest parts of London's East End as they move to the fictional town of Pontybrenin in semi-rural south Wales. The story is set against the backdrop of World War Two and details their struggles to settle into the new community. Ms Jones said: "I've always been fascinated by Welsh history, and especially the less well-known stories of ordinary people living in extraordinary times. "I was inspired to write this book after reading a snippet in the BBC People's War archive about a family who faced racism when they were first evacuated to Ebbw Vale, but were later welcomed into the community. "Through social media, I was able to track down and interview a descendant of the family as part of my research. "Her family's poignant story informed the story of the Clarke children in What We Left Behind." The author, who attended Bassaleg School, studied classical studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, before training as a teacher at the University of South Wales, Newport. She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Writers' Association, and the Romantic Novelists' Association. She was shortlisted for the RNA's Elizabeth Goudge Trophy in 2024. Her first historical novel in The Fitznortons series, The Gilded Cage, quickly became a number one Amazon bestseller in Victorian Historical Romance. When she isn't writing, Luisa enjoys travelling around Europe with her husband in Gwynnie, their 50-year-old Volkswagen camper van. What We Left Behind will be released on May 30 and is available to pre-order now.
