Month: February 2016

Planet Earth II in all its glory. (credit: BBC)

It's been 10 years since the BBC's groundbreaking Planet Earth series hit our screens—and it's now making a welcome return, complete with full use of the latest UHD 4K technology.

Sir David Attenborough will once again front the show, which will appear on TV later this year, the BBC said. Planet Earth II has been three years in the making, and is billed by the Corporation's controller, Charlotte Moore, as a series that "uncovers stories about the natural world we have simply never been able to witness before.”

The BBC—which didn't reveal an air date for the six episodes—has not only shot the whole thing in UHD, but it also used the latest camera stabilisation, remote recording, and aerial drone technology, too. "We take the audience closer to nature and allow you to experience the wilderness as if you were there," it said.

If you'd told me a few months ago that the HTC Vive would cost $799 (about £650) at launch, I'd have spat out my tea, banged my fist on the table, and shouted "you sir, are a buffoon!" Then Oculus announced the price of Rift: £500. Since that day, it was inevitable that HTC would announce a higher price. I mean, at the very least, you get more stuff with the Vive—the wacky doughnut-shaped controllers, and room sensors, and of course the headset itself with its many photosensors, and front facing camera for all those "chaperone" safety visuals.

Justified or not, however, I rarely plunk down £650 on anything without some serious soul-searching, especially when it comes to non-essentials. For me, the Vive is simply priced out of reach.

Having made up my mind that no, I wasn't going to buy a Vive at launch, I had an opportunity to try one again here at MWC—and I couldn't resist. Knowing that the Vive costs £650, and knowing that I wouldn't be buying one at launch I wondered: Would I still think the Vive was worth it? And, more worryingly, would it convince me to buy one?

Part of the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia.

The Universe's first light—the earliest we can peer back in time—is the Cosmic Microwave Background, produced some 350,000 years after the Big Bang. It's the product of electrons pairing up with protons to form hydrogen atoms, releasing light in the process. From there, however, the Universe went dark until the formation of the first stars and galaxies, hundreds of thousands of years later.

Understanding the end of the cosmic dark ages can help us figure out the processes that built the Universe we currently occupy. For now, however, the wavelengths that would allow us to do so have remained out of reach. But researchers are building a new generation of telescopes that will help us reach back to this remote time, and they described their progress at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The formation of hydrogen left the Universe electrically neutral. From there on out, most of the Universe's light was produced by hydrogen atoms—and typically absorbed by other atoms nearby. It wasn't until a sufficient population of stars formed that the light they produced put hydrogen back into an ionized state, allowing light to pass great distances unhindered. Thus, this "epoch of reionization" made the Universe transparent and accessible to our astronomical eyes. And, by studying it, we can examine the first large-scale structures that formed in the Universe.