Today we see the most important launch of the year, as Lightyear is released in cinemas. A sci-fi action-adventure movie, Lightyear tells the origin story of Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut hero who inspired the toy from the Toy Story movies. Marooned on a hostile planet 4.2 million light-years from Earth, the Space Ranger must find a way home through space and time with a group of ambitious recruits and his charming robot companion cat, Sox. The biggest threat to his mission is Zurg, an imposing presence with a mysterious agenda and an army of ruthless robots.
If you’re watching the film, keep an ear out for a voiceover cameo from British astronaut Tim Peake!
There’s a long history of sending toys into space. The first eleven toys were taken into orbit in April 1985 by space shuttle Discovery. A Slinky, a Yo-Yo, a paddle ball and a toy car were all used as part of a physics demonstration to help show the effects of weightlessness.
Buzz’s space mission was education. NASA partnered with Disney Parks to create interactive games, educational worksheets and special messages from Buzz Lightyear. His mission supported NASA’s goal of engaging students in STEM science, technology, engineering and maths).
NASA also invited students to design a mission patch for Buzz’s flight. Adam Carr (11 years old) won the Buzz Lightyear Mission Patch Design Challenge, and his prize included a family trip to Walt Disney World Resort and a tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Space-flownBuzz enjoyed a ticker-tape parade at Walt Disney World Florida in October 2009 and later retired to live in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, US.
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For my Masters dissertation last year I did some research into gardeners who choose to grow unusual edible crops. I settled on two species to investigate, achocha and oca. In the past I’ve written about how to grow achocha – it’s a nice, easy plant and in a temperate climate you should have no problems getting a significant yield. You may have more of a problem dealing with the glut….
Back at the end of May, I picked up two bags of Sárpo Mira seed potatoes, discounted at the garden centre as it was past prime spud-planting time. When I went to GIY UK two months later, I still hadn’t found time to plant them.
If you’re currently tending lettuce plants, then you have something in common with the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS). They’re testing NASA’s new Vegetable Production System – affectionately known as ‘Veggie’. At 11.5 inches by 14.5 inches, Veggie is the largest plant growth chamber to have been blasted into space, and was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp.
I’d like to write more books. I enjoy writing and I have ideas and information that I want so share, and packaging it up neatly in a coherent volume is a bit different to just churning out blog posts. For one thing, it’s more permanent; I’ve sent copies of Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs to the British Library and to the five legal deposit libraries (Bodleian Library Oxford University, The Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales and Trinity College Dublin), and knowing that they have been preserved for posterity is not a small thing.
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some statistics about the average UK garden size, and I found some interesting ones. According to the 2015 media pack for the RHS The Garden magazine, a document that is aimed at attracting advertisers to the publication, the 380,000 RHS members the magazine is sent to have gardens that are 10 times larger than the UK average, covering over half an acre.
Wimbledon fortnight coincides with the height of the strawberry season here in the UK and the humble strawberry becomes world-famous as tennis spectators tuck into strawberries and cream in front of the cameras. This year it even looks like they’ll be able to leave their raincoats at home!
I’m not a chemist, but I do find plant chemistry (and the links and patterns between different plants) to be a fascinating topic. Fortunately there are chemists out there who can bring these to our attention, and Compound Interest includes some great plant-related infographics amongst a wider spread of chemical topics.
Like new potatoes and asparagus, giant American marshmallows are clearly in season at the moment – they’re appearing in all the shops. We spotted them in our local garden centre (!) and, fresh from the success of our inaugural marshmallow toasting, we thought we’d set ourselves a challenge and see whether we could repeat it with something considerably larger.
Part of my dissertation involved immersing myself in the history of plants that have been adopted as crops outside their country of origin – novel crops, as I referred to them. It’s a long history, with recorded attempts to move plants from one place to another going back as far as the ancient Egyptians. Even before that, probably for as long as we’ve been human, we have been moving plants around, whether by accident or design.
One of the great joys of spring is seeing trees leaf out and bloom. They bring so much joy, and do so much for us, and yet are rarely valued as they should be. In particular, ancient trees are wondrous, magical things. Impressive and complex structures, they have lots of nooks and crannies in which wildlife can find a home. As fungi feed on the tree they provide food for woodland creatures, and a hollowed out trunk provides shelter. Although ancient trees are in the final stage of their life, and technically in decline, they have a lot to give, and can go on living for a long time, depending on the species.