Clik here to view.
Science on the sea ice
Yesterday my fellow writers (James and Alice) and I went on an amazing helicopter trip to Cape Evans (to see Scott’s Hutt), to Cape Royds (to see Shackleton’s Hut and the Adelie penguin colony) and to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A met observation and a visit to Scott’s hut
I woke up this morning to a happy birthday to Alice announcement over the PA, followed by some very loud Christmas music – Santa Claus is Coming to Town. When I got up there were Christmas decorations...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Be careful what you wish for
When I arrived here, I didn’t want to leave. But now our stay has been extended. By a day. By another day. By two more days. On Thursday we did “bag drag,” where our bags were weighed and driven over …...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scott Base, Scott Base, this is Rebecca
When I first arrived in Antarctica I felt like the world had just got smaller. This place that had lived in my imagination for so long was suddenly real and underfoot. I’d now been to the Arctic and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alice’s Antarctic diaries
On my recent trip to Antarctica, my fellow writer and near-constant companion was Wellington poet and all-round writer person Alice Miller. We shared a bunk room together, made each other many coffees,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Antarctic playlist update
Before I went to Antarctica I asked people for recommendations on music to listen to while there, and I put together an Antarctic playlist. Turned out I didn’t listen to much music while I was in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Of noddies, humpbacks, tubeworms and sea mats
Late last year I wrote an essay about the science and history of the Kermadec Islands for a gorgeous new book, Kermadec. I was just getting an excerpt from it ready to post when I heard that a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why New Zealanders are so excited about the transit of Venus
The weather forecast for tomorrow’s transit of Venus is appalling. Cloud cover, rain, and gale force winds. But I was up in Tolaga Bay today – the focus of New Zealand’s celebrations of the transit –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kermadecs voyage #1: On the HMNZS Canterbury
In 1955, when the US and USSR were involved in a nuclear arms race, the British Prime Minister asked New Zealand’s permission to test hydrogen bombs in the Kermadecs, a small group of islands about 800...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kermadecs voyage #2: The mystery of the floating pumice
I was planning to write this personal blog at the same time as writing one for Scientific American, but I’m so busy circumnavigating islands in a RHIB, flying into volcanic craters in a Navy Seasprite,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Galileo in Florence
This story first appeared in The Listener, issue 3688, 15 January 2011. I’d come a long way to see Galileo’s arthritic middle finger, but recognised the great 17th-century astronomer’s aged appendage...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The dawning of the age of Anthopocene
This article first appeared in The Listener, issue 3716, 30 July 2011 As a geology student in the late 1980s, I learnt a mnemonic to remember the various geological periods, epochs and ages that make...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New Zealand scientists and the atomic bomb
How proud New Zealand must be that the foundations of the amazing discovery concerning latent atomic energy were laid by her own great scientist Rutherford. – Viscount Bledisloe in telegram to New...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The enigmatic and endangered Kermadec storm petrel
A version of this story first appeared in The Listener on 26 September 2013. One night on Macauley Island, in the Kermadec Islands group, in 1988, ornithologists Alan Tennyson, Graeme Taylor and Paul...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Call for papers – The Fukushima Effect: Nuclear histories, representations...
At the APSTSN conference in Singapore this July, I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Hindmarsh, associate professor at Griffith University, Australia, and editor of Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Particle Fever review
The thing that differentiates scientists,” says physicist Savas Dimopoulos in Particle Fever, “is purely an artistic ability to discern what is a good idea, what is a beautiful idea, what is worth...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pathogens, sediments and nutrients: the nasties making our rivers unsafe
This was first published in the Listener, 31 July 2014. When I was a kid, in the 1970s, the only “unsafe” water I was aware of was the geothermal hot pools of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. If you put your …...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A tribute to my father: Nigel Priestley (1943-2014)
First published in the Listener, issue 3898, 22 January 2015. One day, shortly before I started school, my father took me to his work at the Ministry of Works’ central laboratories, where he was head...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Breathless in Antarctica
Camping in Antarctica last December, I noticed that even though it was extremely cold, -10°C to -20°C, our exhalations didn’t make visible clouds. When the helicopter landed to pick us up, though, our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scott’s Hut: revisited
Few people conjuring up the “most comfortable dwelling place imaginable” are likely to picture a wooden shelter on an island off the coldest continent on Earth. But that’s how Antarctic explorer Robert...
View Article
