There’s something counterintuitive about looking underground to solve a problem that, on the surface, seems to demand the opposite. Things such as sunlight, open air, the usual conditions we associate with growing anything at all are totally absent.

Yet, over a kilometre beneath the North Yorkshire coast, in the tunnels of Boulby Mine, scientists from Boulby Underground Laboratory are testing whether underground environments could be turned into places to grow food. If proven successful, the experiment has the potential to kickstart the recommissioning of disused mines all across the country.

The idea isn’t just about proving crops can grow underground; it’s about what that could mean for the towns built around Britain’s old mining industry, and how we might be able to grow food in a world which faces more extreme weather.

This is not a new concept by any means; underground farming is a practice that has had a lengthy and documented history, with more than 300 farmers growing mushrooms in the Parisian quarries during the 1880’s.

Nonetheless, technology adapts, and in the modern era underground farming is being trialled as a potential answer to our increasingly unpredictable climate.

How does it work?

First comes the seedling which is “planted” in a square rock wool plug. Mimicking traditional soil, it serves as a medium for the baby plant to sprout and put down its roots.

Its purpose is to soak in the nutrient solution in which the sprouts are saturated in. The solution aims to provide the seedling with all the nourishment and hydration it would normally receive from the earth’s soil.

Once two to three weeks have elapsed and the seedling is sufficiently germinated, it is then transplanted to one of the underground farms.

The Boulby Underground Laboratory makes full use of the polyhalite mine’s unique environment. Down at 1.1km below ground and shielded from cosmic radiation and outside weather conditions, it is the perfect space for research centred around dark matter and neutrinos.

For the underground farming experiment, there are 4 farms in total, each with slightly different conditions:

• One is out in the open in the mine, exposed to both the mine’s heat (which can reach upwards of 35C) and salty air.
• Another one enjoys a slightly less salty atmosphere in a ventilated tent; however, it still faces the full brunt of the mine’s temperatures.
• A third one is inside the laboratory, getting to indulge in a sterile and air-conditioned environment.
• Lastly, the fourth one is “a bit up the road”, being in an area of the mine with a bit more airflow. It therefore gets to be in slightly cooler conditions compared to the first two farms.

Once it arrives at one of the farms, each seedling is planted vertically between two spongy panels lined with felt. They help in the absorption of the nutrient solution that runs through each panel. The level of liquid is maintained daily in order to ensure that the plants are adequately watered.

So, we’ve got the soil, we’ve got the water — but how do we get the sun? That is where the light beams play their role. Coming in the form of tubular lights, laid vertically across all the panels, they consistently provide the plants with just the right amount of “sunshine”.

Next up is the fun part: the actual harvest. The plants are removed from their respective panels, weighed, and food-safety tested. They then get packaged and taken to the surface.

So far, our underground farm has produced a successful harvest of lettuce and pak choi. Now the technicians are currently observing a series of plants comprised of tomatoes, basil, samphire and even more lettuce.

The crops planted will be monitored over the coming year to obtain a relevant dataset on quality of harvest, energy use and running costs.

This data will then be used to assess whether underground farming is a viable technique beyond a single site. “We’ll be building a robust model to understand the opportunities of these sites using validated, practical data” says Jacob Nickles, co-lead of the Institute for Sustainable Food’s Controlled Environment Agriculture group at the University of Sheffield.

What’s the purpose?

Ultimately, the underground farming experiment is part of a socio-economic study which, if proven successful could have major impact.

Firstly, it could kickstart the recommissioning of disused mines all across the United Kingdom, helping to put back in use a resource that once helped Great Britain become an industrial powerhouse.

In relation to that, it would help to create an influx of skilled jobs and, in the words of Jacob Nickles, help improve “access to fresh produce and supporting local communities while breathing new life into heritage sites.”

Moreover, it could provide a genuine alternative within the current food production landscape by preventing harvest losses in the face of increasingly volatile weather conditions as well as cast aside any need for pesticides in and around crops.

What it shows

While the project is still in its “trial phase”, it also showcases what science does best: it is innovative and provides alternatives for concepts we long thought of as being set in stone, all while enabling people to put their all into a project and potentially make an impact in all areas of life.

This project is funded by the UK Government through UK Research and Innovation, in collaboration with Jacob Nickles from the University of Sheffield, and Farm Urban.

Written by Darius Oprea, and edited by Jake Hepburn

Can Britain’s disused mines grow its food? was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’ve all seen the big headlines: ‘new super-Earth’ discovered, but how do we know? How do we see them, measure their densities, explore their atmospheres, geologies or even… their potential for life? How do we even know they’re out there…

And what do we even mean by ‘exoplanet’? Astrophysicist Chris Pearson explains.

(Chris is an astrophysicist and space specialist at RAL Space, a part of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.)

In 1995, a discovery confirmed many astronomers’ assumptions: planets exist outside our solar system. These are called extrasolar planets, or exoplanets.

Chris explains, ‘Before the early ‘90s… we didn’t know any planet existed outside the solar system; we assumed they did, but we had no observational evidence…’

We were expecting something similar to our own setup of planets. Smaller rocky bodies close to the parent star (the Sun) and larger gas giants farther out. But what we found is that our solar system is quite strange, and planets in other systems don’t quite follow our pattern.

The problem in detecting exoplanets is obvious.

How can we see tiny planets in front of distant stars? The starlight is from suns and distant galaxies, not the tiny planets circling them…

One of the ways we see them is via gravity. Using a method called radial velocity.

‘The sun pulls on the Earth with Gravity. But the Earth also pulls on the Sun. So, our Sun actually wobbles as the Earth goes around it. And the same happens around other stars as well.

If we look at a star for a long time, we can detect this wobble in the variation of light from the star.’

This is how we discovered the first exoplanet in 1995, Pegasi 51 b which is classed as a hot Jupiter. A gas giant circling very close to its star. This detection method has a natural bias to much bigger planets with larger gravity, increasing the size of the wobble.

Another, and much more common way we detect exoplanets today, is a method called transit.

‘Transit is when a planet moves in front of its parent star, and as it moves in front of the star some that star’s light will be blocked. So, the brightness of the star will decrease a tiny amount. A little dip as the planet moves across.

We can detect that dip as the planet transits across its star. And that dip in the light corresponds to a measure of the size of the planet (and therefore its volume).

If you look at the interaction gravitationally between the star and the planet, you get the mass of the planet. Then density is mass divided by volume; means you can get the density. If you have the density you can say… is it made of rock? Is it made of gas, is it made of water?’

To be sure it’s a planet, the transit method requires many repeat observations, ideally preferentially selecting planets with a very short year. So, days or weeks… woosh you see a transit… another one and then another… building statistical confidence.

Naturally detecting an exoplanet far out from its sun, like a Pluto type object, would mean looking at that star for hundreds of years, because you only see that dip very rarely.

When we look at an exoplanet, observing that dip in the light from a transit, we can also do spectroscopy (looking at the light in many different colours). The star light we’re seeing as a function of wavelength has gaps where the planet’s atmosphere will have absorbed some of that light, and from those spectral lines we can figure out what elements may be present in the planet’s atmosphere.

As of writing there are 6,324 confirmed exoplanets and tens of thousands of candidates which require further observations.

We see exoplanets around every type of star (even black holes). Sun-like stars, (our Sun is a G-type yellow dwarf star for anyone taking notes), around red dwarfs, even around dead stars such as white dwarf stars. In fact, even after a star explodes in supernova, leaving behind neutron stars or pulsars, we see planets orbiting those. Where there’s a star we almost expect to find planets.

We even find free-floating planets in space with no star…

Chris explained some of the weirdest (and most mysterious) exoplanets we’ve found…

‘JuMBOs, Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects. These are Jupiter-sized planets, found in pairs, free-floating. So, they don’t go around a star. These have been discovered in the constellation of Orion, so very common. And something like 40 pairs were found just free-floating in space…

Which supports the conclusion that planetary formation is connected to the general flow of star formation.’

Planetary formation must be a natural step in star formation and the economy of the Universe. There are lots of theories about this, (especially about the free-floating planets. Did they originally have a star? Solar system formation can be quite violent, but is isolated planetary formation a thing as well?)

Ultimately, we want to understand our own place in the Universe, why and how we’re here. Understanding exoplanets, and these processes in the Universe, builds a picture of our own place within it.

Exoplanets, super-Earths, free-floating pairs of Jupiters… all of this sounds like science fiction. And I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke, ‘The truth, as always, will be far stranger.’ and I suspect, stranger still.

Written by: Ky Trickett, Chris Pearson

Astrophysicist explains how we detect exoplanets was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. A Satellite That Tracks Earth’s Breath

The MicroCarb satellite, launched in 2025, monitors carbon dioxide worldwide at a scale never before possible. Scientists can track emissions and natural absorption precisely, with data then informing climate policies and highlighting effective interventions. Countries can see what works and where more action is needed. MicroCarb allows scientists to detect trends in global carbon emissions and refine climate models. It provides a daily snapshot of Earth’s “breath,” helping governments, researchers, and environmental groups take informed action to slow climate change.

Learn more: https://www.ukri.org/news/uk-french-satellite-launches-to-transform-climate-monitoring/

2. Turning air into fuel with green ammonia

Conventional ammonia is usually made with fossil fuels in a process that releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide. STFC researchers are showing there’s another way. At the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, they’ve designed a small plant to demonstrate that ammonia can be made using only renewable electricity, water, and air. Ammonia can be transported like liquid gas, then burned cleanly or cracked back into hydrogen to power engines and fuel cells. It’s a potential carbon-free fuel and energy store that can help us stockpile renewable power for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

Learn more: https://www.technology.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/News-Conferences-and-Publications/UKRI-and-STFC-News/Designs-for-green-ammonia-plant-become-reality.aspx

3. Neutron science and protecting peatlands

Indonesia’s peatlands are among the planet’s most powerful natural carbon stores, but decades of drainage for plantations have left them prone to underground fires that can smoulder for months, releasing up to ten times more carbon than forest fires. Scientists from Universitas Indonesia and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source have used neutron imaging to see inside burning peat for the first time, tracking moisture loss, soil collapse, and the transformation of peat into char and ash as combustion takes place. This breakthrough means researchers can now directly observe what happens inside smouldering peat rather than relying on computer simulations, making better fire prevention strategies possible that could help protect these critical ecosystems and the vast amounts of carbon they hold.

Learn more: https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/science-highlights/studying-indonesian-peat-as-it-smoulders/

4. Improving Disaster Planning with Satellites

A new AI model can detect environmental changes across the UK using satellite data (even through cloud cover) by combining optical imagery with radar technology. It can rapidly identify the extent of flooding and other climate-driven events, helping to improve emergency response and future planning. Developed by the STFC Hartree Centre and IBM, the open-source model can be adapted far beyond disaster response, with applications spanning deforestation monitoring, wildfire tracking, food security, urban planning, and renewable energy development. All of this makes it a versatile tool for building a more resilient future.

Learn more: https://www.hartree.stfc.ac.uk/case-studies/2025/06/25/harnessing-geospatial-ai-for-environmental-resilience/

5. Wildfire toxins hitch a ride in clouds

Scientists from the Central Laser Facility (CLF) and University of Bristol found that toxic chemicals released during wildfires can survive longer in the atmosphere by dissolving into cloud droplets. These toxins — such as 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP) — normally break down, but when protected inside droplets they linger and spread. Their research shows how pollutants can stay airborne longer, contributing to air quality and climate impacts far from the fire source. It’s a dramatic link between atmospheric chemistry, pollution transport, and public health. Plus, knowledge like this may help to improve air-quality management and provide more accurate climate predictions.

Learn more: https://medium.com/big-science-at-stfc/lingering-poison-how-wildfire-toxins-hitch-a-ride-in-the-clouds-2382c72a14fe

Story by: Ben Gilliland

Five Ways STFC Science is Helping the Planet was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Four centuries ago, in 1604, the world looked nothing like the one that studies the cosmos today. Shakespeare was still writing for the stage. Galileo had not yet pointed a telescope at the sky. The very idea that stars are distant suns lay centuries in the future.

And yet, in an age before modern astronomy, renowned astronomer Johannes Kepler closely studied a ‘new star’ that suddenly appeared in the night sky. Shining from roughly 13,000 light years away, this explosion, coined Kepler’s Supernova (SN 1604), became the last supernova ever witnessed in our Milky Way galaxy.

Although rare, a galactic supernova is expected to occur roughly once every 1.6 centuries. Remnants of later galactic supernovae have been identified by modern astronomers, but SN1604 is the last to be directly observed at the time of explosion in the Milky Way in over 400 years. So why have we not observed one?

Possibly the biggest challenge in observing a galactic supernova is looking in the right place at the right time. Most supernovae are expected to occur within the galactic plane: the dense, thin disk where most of the stars in the Milky Way reside. But this region is also thick with interstellar gas and dust. It’s possible that many supernovae have occurred in our galaxy since 1604, but the light never reached Earth through the dusty haze of our galaxy’s interstellar medium.

Stars that go supernova may be blindingly bright, reaching peak luminosities comparable to that of a whole galaxy, but the spectacle is extremely short-lived, remaining visible for a few months at most. This can still be missed by modern telescopes — which is why an advance signal is essential.

Enter SNEWS, the SuperNova Early Warning System.

What is SNEWS?

SNEWS is a global network of neutrino experiments, gravitational-wave detectors and telescopes working together to detect and probe the next galactic supernova in a way that has never been done before — using neutrinos as an early warning signal.

Neutrinos are some of the most elusive particles in the universe. A neutrino can easily pass through a light year of solid lead without interacting, yet their ghostly nature makes them indispensable to supernova detection.

When a massive star runs out of fuel, the outward pressure generated by the fuel-burning core can no longer balance the star’s own crushing gravity, and the resulting core collapse generates a shock wave that ripples from the very core to the outer edge of the star, blasting it apart in a brilliant supernova.

The visible light we see from the event is repeatedly absorbed and re-emitted by matter as it tries to escape the dense stellar envelope. However, this light is only a tiny fraction of a percent of the total energy released in the explosion — 99% escapes as neutrinos.

Most neutrinos pass through the star, speeding ahead and permeating the galaxy. In the race to Earth, neutrinos can arrive minutes, hours, or even days before any visible light does.

In 1987, two major neutrino detectors, Kamiokande in Japan and the Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven (IMB) detector in the US, recorded neutrino bursts from supernova SN1987A in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. Kamiokande saw 11 events, IMB detected eight, and a later analysis by the Baksan Neutrino Observatory in Russia identified five more. Just two dozen neutrinos were observed across 13 seconds, a small yet transformative dataset, with which SN1987A confirmed key aspects of supernova physics and placed important limits on properties such as neutrino mass.

Although the neutrinos arrived about three hours before the light, it was the flash of light that astronomers noticed first, prompting scientists to review neutrino data. SNEWS aims to reverse this dynamic, ensuring that the early-arriving neutrinos are detected and recognised immediately. By using this natural head start, SNEWS can issue an alert, giving astronomers precious time to aim their telescopes before the first light from the explosion reaches Earth.

Coordinating the world’s detectors

At the heart of SNEWS is a central computer at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, that receives alerts from neutrino detectors around the world. Each experiment sends signals indicating when it has seen activity that might resemble a burst of supernova neutrinos. On their own, these alerts are not enough. When there are alerts from multiple detectors within a short window, it suggests that a burst of supernova neutrinos has swept across Earth, prompting SNEWS to issue a network-wide alert.

A brief history of SNEWS

The idea for SNEWS emerged in the late 1990s, and the automated network has been operating since 2005. As the first system of its kind, SNEWS adopted criteria so stringent that it never issued an alert.

It became clear that a delicate balance is needed: too many false alerts and astronomers may tune out; none, and the network risks fading into the background. Determining an appropriate false alarm rate became a key driver for the next iteration of SNEWS.

SNEWS 2.0: A new era for supernova alerts

Currently in design and testing, SNEWS 2.0, aims to maintain a healthier equilibrium, ensuring the network remains reliable and responsive. One of its major goals is to improve the ability to estimate direction and distances to supernovae.

The original SNEWS network focused on identifying a coincidence in neutrino bursts across different detectors, confirming it was likely that an event had occurred. Today, with dozens more large-scale neutrino detectors spread around the globe, the slight differences in arrival times of neutrino bursts can be used to triangulate a direction on the sky. This still produces a fairly large search area, but SNEWS 2.0 aims to reduce it further by combining neutrino timing with astrophysical context, such as whether the direction aligns with the galactic plane of our galaxy, or whether known red supergiants or other likely progenitors lie in that region.

Together, direction and distance drastically narrow down the candidate stars from thousands to only a handful. With this information, astronomers can direct their best instruments towards the right region at the right moment, giving us the best chance of observing a galactic supernova as early as possible, in as much detail as possible.

Cosmic events in full colour: the era of multi-messenger astronomy

Historically, astronomy relied solely on visible light observations. Today, we can make observations across the full electromagnetic spectrum, in neutrinos, and in gravitational waves: multi-messenger astronomy.

‘There’s a lot of potential to better understand phenomena in the universe if we have different ways of looking at them. We do this all the time in everyday life, we see things and we hear them, and that gives us a lot more information about what’s going on than say, watching an old black and white silent film’ — Dr Jost Migenda, Senior Research Software Engineer at King’s College London and SNEWS collaborator

Neutrino observations provide a window into the very earliest stages of a supernova, moments which can’t be probed by light, from the formation processes to the instantaneous implosion of the core. Neutrinos also carry clues about what the star becomes next. Whilst a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it lives on, either as a neutron star or a black hole. Both objects hold answers to some of science’s most fundamental mysteries, from dark energy to gravity. Observing the neutrinos that signal their birth is of substantial interest across astrophysics, nuclear physics, and particle physics.

Supernova neutrinos are also a useful tool for probing the properties of neutrinos themselves. In their journey, they travel all the way from the dense core of the supernova, through the empty vacuum of space, through the Earth’s many layers, to our detectors, allowing scientists to probe neutrino behaviour through a variety of media, and test models of supernova physics with unprecedented precision.

Gravitational waves add another perspective. When a supernova is asymmetric, gravitation waves carry information about the dynamics of the collapse itself. These signals are expected to arrive around the same time as the neutrino burst, and gravitational-wave detectors on the SNEWS network can both contribute to real-time alerts and retrospectively search their data for subtle signals.

Collaboration, curiosity and culture

SNEWS runs on the foundations of existing experiments, with every detector contributing to SNEWS whilst still conducting its own independent scientific programme. Making improvements to the SNEWS network has motivated more robust data-acquisition systems and smarter triggering algorithms, which benefit many of the experiments on the network, all at a minimal relative cost.

“SNEWS has been a cost-effective way of expanding the impact of what we do with the UK science programme. It’s quite a useful thing for us to be involved in.” — Jeff Tseng, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and SNEWS collaborator

But SNEWS is more than just a scientific network. It’s a community and a culture.

Anyone can sign up to receive SNEWS alerts. You don’t need an astrophysics degree or a high-tech telescope, just a passion for the cosmos and observing the unobservable. Much of the work done by SNEWS collaborators is done as a “hobby project,” driven by genuine fascination, with less focus on competition or publication pressure. The result is a collaborative environment where ideas and software are openly shared.

The network brings together people who don’t always sit at the same table: particle physicists, gravitational-wave scientists, astronomers, and theorists. For young researchers especially, many of whom only work on one experiment, SNEWS bridges gaps in expertise and geography, fostering early-career collaboration across experimental and theoretical communities.

‘That’s an important aspect of SNEWS; even if we don’t see a galactic supernova in the next 10, 20, or even 50 years, SNEWS already has an impact. SNEWS already brings the field of supernova research forward.’ — Jost Migenda

As development of the SNEWS 2.0 alert list continues, the network is steadily strengthening the connections and capabilities that will define the next era of supernova research.

Story by: Ottilie Goodfellow

How scientists are preparing for the Milky Way’s next supernova was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On any given breezy day along Britain’s coast, turbines can be seen spin steadily, diligently converting wind into electricity. It’s become a familiar sight — the poster child for renewable energy. You might be forgiven for thinking that wind farms like this are, at best, a top-up solution to the country’s energy needs. In fact, there are times that wind farms generate so much power that the grid can’t keep up.

In 2024, more than 8 terawatt-hours of wind-generated electricity were curtailed in the UK -that’s power that was produced but not used, because the grid had nowhere to send it. Instead, turbines were switched off and energy was lost. The cost of that unused power came to £1.23 billion, paid by the government in compensation to wind farm operators.

The problem isn’t with the wind farms themselves. It’s with the infrastructure. And as we increase our reliance on renewables, the issue is only going to grow. Unless we find better ways to store energy when it’s plentiful, we won’t be able to use it when it’s needed most.

This is where a molecule many of us associate with fertiliser (or perhaps the all-pervasive pee smell emanating from a stale cat’s litter tray), ammonia, comes in.

The humble molecule that ASPIREs to greatness

Ammonia (NH₃) has been a cornerstone of industrial agriculture since the early 20th century. It’s made by combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen, typically extracted from natural gas. That process, known as Haber-Bosch, is energy-intensive and accounts for around 1.8% of global CO₂ emissions.

But ammonia has another, lesser-known property. It can act as a carrier of energy. Specifically, it can store hydrogen, which is a gas often hailed as a clean fuel of the future. Unlike hydrogen, which is difficult to store and transport, ammonia is more stable and has an existing infrastructure for distribution.

Ammonia can also be used directly as a fuel. Burned in an engine or converted back into hydrogen, it offers a way to move and store energy without producing carbon emissions.

The key is making it clean in the first place, which is where a project called ASPIRE comes in.

At a research facility in Oxfordshire, a prototype plant designed to produce green ammonia (ammonia made using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels) is currently being tested. The plant is part of a project called ASPIRE (Ammonia Synthesis Plant for Intermittent Renewable Energy), led by researchers at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The concept is quite simple: take excess renewable electricity, of the kind that would otherwise be wasted, and use it to make ammonia. This ammonia can then be stored for later use, used as fuel, or transported to where it’s needed.

Funded by the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, ASPIRE is a demonstration of how ammonia could help solve one of the biggest technical challenges facing renewable energy: intermittency.

Green ammonia from green electrons

ASPIRE turns electricity into ammonia in several steps. First, it uses an electrolyser to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is released or collected, and the hydrogen is retained.

Next, nitrogen is extracted from the atmosphere using a method called pressure swing adsorption , which a way of separating gases based on how they behave under pressure. Since Earth’s atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen, this step is fairly straightforward.

The final step is where hydrogen and nitrogen meet and react to form ammonia. That reaction takes place inside a specially designed system that can speed up or slow down to match the flow of renewable electricity. It works smoothly whether it’s running at full tilt or ticking along at just a tenth of its maximum output, and it can shift between those levels in under a minute.

This flexibility facilitates using green electrons to make green ammonia, which is chemically identical to conventional ammonia, but with a significantly lower carbon footprint. Once made, it’s stored as a liquid in tanks, ready for use.

How does the chemistry work?

H₂O → H₂ + O₂

N₂ + 3H₂ → 2NH₃

But what does that mean?

First, water is split into its basic parts — hydrogen and oxygen — using electricity. It’s the same idea as using a current to break apart a molecule, only here it’s done on an industrial scale. That gives us this:

H₂O → H₂ + O₂

It means one molecule of water (H₂O) becomes one molecule of hydrogen gas (H₂) and one of oxygen gas (O₂). The oxygen can be released or captured for other uses. The hydrogen is the part we’re after as that is the raw material for making ammonia.

Next, nitrogen is pulled from the air, which is convenient, because about four-fifths of the air we breathe is nitrogen. When you mix that nitrogen with hydrogen under the right conditions of heat and pressure, they react to form ammonia:

N₂ + 3H₂ → 2NH₃

Why use ammonia instead of storing electricity in batteries?

Batteries are effective for short-term storage and rapid discharge, but they’re expensive to scale up for national energy systems. Ammonia, on the other hand, can be stored in large quantities for months, even years. It’s also already transported globally as part of the fertiliser industry, meaning much of the infrastructure already exists.

Ammonia is also versatile. It can be used directly in combustion engines (with some modifications), cracked back into hydrogen, or used to power fuel cells. And unlike hydrogen, it doesn’t need to be stored at high pressure or ultra-low temperatures.

This versatility makes it especially attractive for sectors that are difficult to decarbonise — such as shipping, peaking power generation, and industrial heat.

Putting an end to wasted wind energy

One of ASPIRE’s most promising features is its ability to operate flexibly when wind energy is running at a surplus. Because the process is powered by electricity, the plant can ramp up production when renewable energy is abundant and electricity is cheap. When demand increases or renewable output drops, it can scale down.

This kind of responsive production helps address the problem of curtailment (when generators are asked to reduce output because supply exceeds demand). By capturing surplus electricity and turning it into a storable fuel, ASPIRE provides a buffer between production and use.

That’s especially valuable in the UK, where wind energy plays a growing role in the national grid. If ASPIRE-like systems were deployed more widely, they could reduce curtailment and lower the overall cost of transitioning to renewables.

Environmental impact

Producing ammonia the traditional way is carbon-intensive. But when it’s made using renewable electricity, the carbon footprint drops dramatically. ASPIRE’s method produces no direct carbon emissions but accounting for embodied carbon it still produces less than 10% of the emissions of conventional ammonia production and avoids the use of fossil fuels altogether.

The International Energy Agency estimates that green ammonia could eventually cut global CO₂ emissions by up to 15%, depending on how broadly it’s adopted.

Of course, scaling up production won’t be without challenges. Electrolysers and clean hydrogen infrastructure need to expand. Green ammonia must also compete on cost with conventional alternatives — which are currently cheaper because they rely on cheap natural gas.

But, as carbon prices increase, green energy initiatives get more support and priority, and costs for renewable electricity fall, green ammonia will become more competitive.

An economic opportunity

By producing green ammonia from surplus electricity, plants like ASPIRE could turn an energy management problem into an economic opportunity. Ammonia could be sold as fuel, used in fertiliser production, or exported to countries looking for clean energy carriers.

And unlike fossil fuel production, green ammonia supports energy independence as it can be made domestically, using local renewable resources. That reduces exposure to volatile global gas prices and improves energy resilience.

Green ammonia isn’t a one size fits all energy solution. But it does offer a set of tools that could complement other low-carbon technologies — especially in areas where batteries and direct electrification are less practical.

Projects like ASPIRE hope to demonstrate that it’s possible to use renewable electricity in new ways, building flexible systems that store energy, reduce waste, and cut emissions.

Fuel from thin air: turning wind waste into a climate solution was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

High on a Chilean mountaintop, four enormous mirrors sit beneath some of the clearest skies on Earth. Together, they form the Very Large Telescope, or VLT — Europe’s flagship ground-based optical observatory.

For most of their history, telescopes like this were limited to surveying the heavens with a single unblinking eye — be that eye a dish or a lens. Today, some work in pairs, or are outfitted with devices that allow them to examine a few tens of objects simultaneously, but soon, the VLT will receive an upgrade that will allow it to view the Universe with, not one, not a few dozen, but a thousand eyes.

The new instrument is called MOONS, or the Multi-Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph. And it will give the VLT the power to look at a thousand stars and or galaxies at the same time, and then to prise apart their light to read the stories that light carries.

Cracking the rainbow barcode

Each of MOONS’ ‘eyes’ is a fibre: a hair-thin thread of glass that can be positioned with extraordinary accuracy to catch the light of a single star or galaxy.

Imagine the VLT’s mirror collecting a field of starlight. MOONS lays out a thousand fibres across that field, each one assigned to a target. Every fibre then feeds that light into one of two spectrographs — optical instruments that split it into its rainbow of colours.

That rainbow becomes a barcode. Every dark line, every faint variation in brightness is a piece of information: the star’s temperature, its chemical make-up, its speed towards or away from us. Galaxies reveal how and when their stars formed, how the environment in which they live has affected them, and how much gas they still have to make new stars.

Historically, this would be slow work — picking through stars one target at a time, but with MOONS, astronomers can observe a thousand stars at once, spread across a patch of sky as wide as the full Moon.

Sometimes more is just more

MOONS turns the VLT from a sharp-eyed observer into a survey machine.

That shift matters because astronomy is no longer just about individual objects. We don’t just want to know what one star is like — we want to know how billions of stars assembled into the Milky Way we see today. We don’t just want to know the shape of one galaxy– we want to know how galaxies grow, collide, and change over cosmic time.

To answer those questions, you need samples. Huge samples. Millions of stars. Millions of galaxies. MOONS is designed for exactly that. Over its ten-year lifetime, it will capture millions of spectra. Enough to write not just case studies, but a statistical history of the Universe.

Peering into the clouds of home

The centre of our Milky Way is packed with stars and swaddled in thick clouds of dust. To visible light, it is almost opaque. But MOONS sees into the infrared, where the dust becomes transparent. That means it can look deep into the Galaxy’s bulge — its crowded heart — and pull out the histories encoded in those stars.

It will measure their motions and their chemical fingerprints using the rich forests of spectral features across their optical and the near-infrared spectrum. Put those together and you can sort stars into families, trace their orbits, and reconstruct the mergers and collapses that built the Galaxy we live in.

Astronomers call this Galactic archaeology: digging through the chemical and dynamical layers of the Milky Way the way an archaeologist reads layers of soil. MOONS gives them the scale to dig not with a trowel but with an excavator.

Crossing the redshift desert

Push beyond our Galaxy and MOONS tackles a different puzzle.

There’s a period in cosmic history nicknamed the ‘redshift desert’ — a stretch where galaxies are too far away for optical spectrographs to see them clearly, but not far enough for older infrared instruments to catch them efficiently. It’s an awkward gap, and it covers the time when the Universe was most furiously forming stars.

MOONS was built to bridge that desert. By covering both optical and near-infrared light in one shot, it can follow galaxies through this crucial era, measuring how their star-forming gas is consumed, replenished, or blown away by black holes and supernovae.

On still larger scales, MOONS will map the distribution of galaxies across cosmic time, helping to test models of dark matter and dark energy. It will also provide the ‘spectroscopic glue’ that ties together vast imaging surveys like Gaia, Euclid and the Vera Rubin Observatory. Pictures show you where things are. Spectra tell you what they are, how far away, and how they’ve changed.

Choreographing the dance of a thousand robots

Behind MOONS’ power lies some remarkable engineering. At its heart is a field plate studded with around a thousand tiny robots. Each one controls the position of a fibre. Before every new observation, software calculates where each target will fall, and the robots shuffle the fibres into place. The choreography has to be perfect: their patrol zones overlap like a crowded dance floor. The system has to avoid collisions, settle into position, and do it all in under two minutes — or precious observing time is lost.

Once light enters the fibres, it travels to two identical spectrographs mounted on the side of the telescope. Each spectrograph splits the light into colour channels that cover the visible red spectrum and into the near-infrared. The detectors sit inside cryogenic housings, cooled to around -140C to keep noise low and signals clean.

The atmosphere adds its own complications. The night sky isn’t dark in the infrared — it’s scribbled over with bright emission lines from oxygen and hydroxyl in the upper atmosphere. MOONS counters this by spreading those lines out finely enough to distinguish them from real signals, and by pairing object fibres with sky fibres so the unwanted glow can be subtracted.

The result is spectra sharp enough to measure stellar motions to a few kilometres per second, and faint enough to detect galaxies billions of light years away.

The bigger picture

Every generation of telescope instruments reshapes astronomy. MOONS is one of those instruments.

It turns the VLT into a survey telescope, linking today’s imaging projects to the coming era of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The ELT, now under construction, will zoom in on individual objects with a 39-metre mirror. MOONS will tell it where to look.

You can think of it as MOONS providing the map while the ELT provides the magnifying glass. One finds patterns, the other unpicks the detail.

Built and trained in the UK

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is a lead partner in MOONS. The UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh, and leader of the international consortium, managed the MOONS project from inception to completion — building the cyrostats and building and testing the thousand-robot fibre system in the front end of the instrument — and the software that drives it. It was at UK ATC that those robots were trained to dance without bumping into each other, where the device was assembled, and where the whole assembly was put through its paces before being shipped to Chile.

In Cambridge, the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology built and aligned the six cameras for the spectrographs, which cover the three colour channels in each of the two spectrographs. Getting those cameras aligned and stable inside a cryogenic environment is no small feat. Without them, the light caught by MOONS’ fibres would never resolve into the barcodes astronomers need.

And the UK contribution isn’t just hardware. British astronomers are at the helm of major survey programmes planned for MOONS’ guaranteed observing time.

Through STFC, the UK’s investment has bought not only a central role in building the instrument but also a central role in deciding what it will do.

Building MOONS has been a decade-long endeavour. At the UK ATC in Edinburgh, engineers have been integrating and testing the instrument piece by piece: the fibre system, the spectrographs, the software. In 2024, MOONS passed its acceptance tests in Europe, the last major hurdle before shipment to Chile.

The next steps are installation on the VLT and the first nights of commissioning under Paranal’s famously dark skies. That’s when MOONS’ thousand eyes will finally open.

A new way of seeing

Astronomy has always been about seeing further and seeing better. With MOONS, it’s also about seeing more.

One eye can tell you the story of one star. A thousand eyes can weave you the history of a galaxy. A million spectra can tell you how the Universe built everything we see today.

When MOONS begins work on the VLT, it won’t just be another instrument. It will be a new kind of vision. A thousand eyes on the sky. A thousand stories of the past, caught in the light of the night.

Story by: Ben Gilliland

MOONS: a thousand eyes on the Universe was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is Alex. Alex is a hypothetical human whose hypothetical life could be made better by some very real advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Let’s accompany Alex as they journey from birth to old age and we’ll see how AI could make that life safer, easier, healthier and even (maybe) a little bit longer.

Imagine if life had a helpful sidekick, quietly watching over you from the moment you’re born all the way through to your golden years. For Alex, that sidekick comes in the form of AI. Let’s follow Alex’s life and see how AI has the potential to make that life a little better…

Birth: digital health detectives

When Alex enters the world, health is everything. Some STFC-supported start-up companies are using AI to monitor newborns’ vital signs. These systems watch heart rates, oxygen levels, and movements, alerting doctors to any red flags before they become problems.

Think of it like a mini health detective: constantly scanning, comparing patterns, and sending a heads-up if something looks off. Alex might not notice, but those early alerts could make all the difference.

Even hospitals are turning AI to their advantage. At Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, STFC and the Hartree Centre are helping turn the hospital into a ‘cognitive hospital’. AI tools like the ‘Ask Oli’ chatbot provide patients and families with non-medical, real-time guidance, while behind the scenes, data-driven systems help staff better organise their days.

It’s like having a quiet, invisible team of assistants keeping an eye on everything — so Alex can grow up safe and healthy, and health professionals can focus on care instead of logistics.

Childhood: learning, watching, adapting

As Alex grows, school comes into the picture. AI doesn’t just help with their health, it also creeps into learning. By analysing how children learn, AI can suggest which topics might need extra attention, making lessons a little less one-size-fits-all.

Adolescence: skills, curiosity, careers

Teenage Alex starts thinking about what comes next: jobs, interests, and passions. AI steps in again, not by doing homework, but by highlighting potential career paths. Algorithms can sift through skills, market trends, and industry needs to show what might suit Alex best.

At the same time, STFC supports student placements that let teenagers explore real-world AI in science and engineering. Alex might build tiny prediction models or see how AI sorts through mountains of data. It’s early exposure to tools that will shape future careers.

AI systems have the ability to look for patterns humans could miss, connecting dots between abilities and real-world opportunities.

Early Adulthood: home buying gets smarter

Buying a first home? That’s a lot of forms, checks, and waiting — why not let AI take some of the burden. The Hartree Centre worked with Collaborative Conveyancing Limited to build an AI that handles inquiries, predicts delays, and speeds up the process.

Instead of making Alex wait for months, the AI flags issues and keeps things moving. It’s like having a clever assistant sorting paperwork in the background, leaving humans to focus on the fun part, such as choosing curtains, or the locations of those small patches of paint sample tests that will live on their walls for the next five years… until that inevitable coat of magnolia covers it all back up again.

Parenthood: predictive health in action

Fast forward a few years and Alex is now a parent. Here, AI isn’t just convenient; it’s lifesaving. Healthcare Screening and Management AI can look at symptoms, past medical history, and wider datasets to forecast potential illnesses.

For conditions like Crohn’s disease, AI can map historical patient data and flag likely flare-ups before they hit.

Imagine Alex checking a dashboard that says, ‘Alert: pattern suggests a possible flare in the next week’. It’s not predicting the future, but it is detecting trends invisible to the naked eye.

Daily life: digital awareness and detecting fakes

Life isn’t just about health and home. The online world is tricky. Deepfakes and misinformation are everywhere. The Hartree Centre developed AI that (amongst other things) can spot fakes by analysing video and audio patterns.

It might be obvious to you that the Pope didn’t really wrestle that laser-toting shark, but not all AI-generated videos are as easy to spot.

Alex doesn’t have to be an expert. The AI highlights inconsistencies humans might miss, such as tiny glitches or unusual patterns — helping Alex make sense of what’s real and what isn’t.

Daily life: lifelong learning and exploration

Through every stage of life, learning never stops. STFC initiatives provide opportunities to work with AI on real-world science and engineering projects.

For Alex, it’s a chance to experiment, test ideas, and see AI in action. From spotting trends in massive datasets to building predictive models, it’s hands-on science that grows with life experience.

Daily life: putting a good face on

Even something as simple as choosing makeup gets an AI assist. Dcypher, supported by STFC, has developed systems that scan skin tone and recommend the perfect foundation.

Alex doesn’t have to guess which shade works best. The AI compares subtle variations across hundreds of data points — tiny undertones and nuances — and gives a recommendation tailored exactly to Alex’s skin. It’s a bit like having a personal beauty consultant who never gets tired.

Daily life: navigating life’s (literal) potholes

Face suitably adorned, Alex is on the way to a job interview but running late. The last thing they need is a bone-jarring, wheel-wrecking collision with a pothole. Roads wear down with time, but STFC-backed innovation is on the case.

At Daresbury Laboratory, a start-up called Robotiz3d is developing the world’s first autonomous pothole repair robot. Using AI, it can spot cracks in the road, analyse their depth and structure, and patch them before they grow into car-wrecking craters. For Alex, that means a smoother ride and one less thing to stress about on an already tense morning.

Later Life: I’ve fallen and I CAN get up

As Alex reaches later life, AI shifts to keeping life safe and independent. The SAFE STEPS project monitors daily activity and health data, spotting patterns that could indicate a fall or other risks.

Sensors feed the AI, which acts like a silent guardian. If something unusual happens — say Alex’s walking pace changes — it flags the issue for caregivers. This proactive approach gives confidence to live independently while keeping safety in check.

Meanwhile, ongoing health monitoring AI keeps an eye on vitals and predicts potential illnesses. Alex gets alerts before small problems become potentially life-threatening emergencies.

And that’s where we leave Alex: not in some dystopian sci-fi future where religious leaders battle cartilaginous fish, but right here, at the end of an ordinary life. A life that ran a little smoother because of a thousand invisible bits of science ticking away in the background.

Some of it came from STFC labs, some from STFC-supported start-ups and universities, but all of it came from people trying to make sense of the messy, bewildering, yet always brilliant data of being human.

The future of AI was never about a robot uprising.

It was about science quietly lending a hand.

Story by: Ben Gilliland

How AI could make your life better… no really, we’ve (literally) done the science was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Generated deep within its molten iron core, the Earth’s magnetic field loops outward into space like an invisible cocoon. It shields us from charged particles rushing in from the Sun and guides migrating animals as faithfully as it swings a compass needle north.

This shield is not static — it continually quivers and ripples — and, sometimes, under the assault of a solar storm, it thrashes like a loose sail in a hurricane. And when it does, the tremors can surge through our technology in ways we are only just beginning to understand.

“The magnetic field is often invisible to people in their daily lives. But when it changes suddenly, it can affect everything from satellites to power grids. Understanding those changes, in detail and in real time, is crucial.”

Professor Ciaran Beggan, British Geological Survey.

When the field falters

Most of the time, the magnetic field’s shifts are gentle. But every so often, the Sun hurls something bigger. Coronal mass ejections — billions of tonnes of plasma — barrel across space and slam into our magnetosphere.

When that happens, the field doesn’t just flutter. It buckles. Great surges of current are driven into the ground, flowing through wires, pipelines and rails. Engineers call them geomagnetically induced currents. To everyone else, they look like sudden blackouts, scrambled GPS signals or satellites tumbling out of orbit.

The list of past disruptions is sobering. In March 1989, a geomagnetic storm plunged six million people in Quebec into darkness in less than two minutes, after transformers collapsed under the load. In February 2022, dozens of Starlink satellites were lost when their orbits decayed after a solar storm swelled Earth’s atmosphere.

And then there is the ghost of 1859 — the Carrington Event. The storm was so powerful it set telegraph wires ablaze, gave operators electric shocks and painted the skies with auroras as far south as the Caribbean. If such an event struck today, with our global web of satellites, power grids and navigation systems, the fallout could be catastrophic.

This is why scientists want to watch the magnetic field with sharper eyes and quicker ears.

The problem with blind spots

Until recently, the UK relied on three magnetic observatories in Lerwick, Eskdalemuir, and Hartland to measure the field. These are excellent for watching broad changes across the country, but local pulses slip through.

Think of it as listening to an orchestra with microphones only at the back of the hall. You hear the main themes, but the subtleties, the quick trills of the violins or the sudden thump of the timpani, are lost.

Those subtleties matter. Magnetic pulses can vary from region to region, town to town. A storm that barely nudges the grid in Cornwall might hammer power lines in Yorkshire. Without local detail, models of how storms ripple through the UK, and how they threaten our infrastructure, remain incomplete.

Quantum sensors: the new instruments

This is where the UK’s new quantum magnetometers come in. Built through a partnership led by RAL Space with the University of Strathclyde, the instruments are being deployed at sites across the country. One sits deep inside the Boulby Underground Laboratory in North Yorkshire, shielded from surface noise.

Another has been installed at the Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire, where it joins a suite of instruments already monitoring the skies. Together with sensors in Aberystwyth, Blickling and Thurso, they promise to fill in the gaps in our magnetic map.

Unlike conventional magnetometers, which measure large-scale field changes, quantum devices harness the properties of atoms themselves. By monitoring the spins of atoms held in a vapour, they can detect minute variations in magnetic flux — changes a hundred times smaller than classical sensors can pick up.

Quantum sensors give scientists a completely new level of sensitivity — enabling them to capture magnetic pulses that, until now, were simply invisible.

At Boulby, 1.1 kilometres beneath the surface of a working potash and polyhalite mine, the sensor enjoys a uniquely quiet environment. Shielded from human electromagnetic “noise” on the surface, it can listen to the planet with rare clarity.

The field as a heartbeat

The data these sensors produce is like a cardiogram for the Earth. Most of the time, the heartbeat is steady. But when the Sun flares, the heart skips. There are palpitations, sudden jolts, long arrhythmic surges.

By recording those pulses locally, scientists can begin to understand how magnetic storms propagate across the UK — how they start, how they spread, how they fade. The aim is not simply to observe, but to predict.

“It’s about resilience. If we know how and where these pulses will hit, operators of power grids, pipelines and satellites can take action in advance. They can reroute power, switch to safe modes, or delay sensitive operations until the storm passes.”

Professor Ciaran Beggan, British Geological Survey.

Lessons from the past, tools for the future

The potential consequences of getting this wrong are already written in history. The Quebec blackout, the Starlink losses, and the Carrington Event are not outliers, but warnings. As our reliance on interconnected technology deepens, the risks rise.

Imagine a Carrington-scale storm today. Long-distance power lines could overload. Global navigation could degrade. Internet traffic through satellites could falter. The economic cost would run into trillions.

But with a dense network of quantum sensors, scientists believe we can move from reaction to prevention. Local readings feed into national and international models. Those models predict which regions are most at risk and when. That means warnings which are minutes or even hours ahead that could save both money and lives.

A uniquely British contribution

The deployment of quantum sensors is part of the UK’s National Quantum Technology Programme. It brings together expertise from the British Geological Survey, the National Physical Laboratory, the University of Strathclyde and RAL Space.

At Boulby, the collaboration extends deep underground. The laboratory, one of the UK’s most unusual scientific facilities, is already home to experiments in dark matter detection and astrobiology. Now, with quantum magnetometry, it adds another thread to its subterranean science.

From local pulses to global networks

The vision extends beyond the UK. If quantum magnetometers were rolled out worldwide, they could form a global grid of magnetic listening posts. Together, they would track solar storms in unprecedented detail, mapping their progress around the planet like weather satellites track clouds.

For now, the UK’s five new sensors — in Aberystwyth, Boulby, Blicking, Chilbolton and Thurso — mark the beginning of that journey. They are our early warning system, tuned to the heartbeat of the Earth.

Rattle and hum

Beneath our feet, the Earth hums. Most of the time it is a background note, steady and unnoticed. But sometimes, the hum turns into a warning drumbeat.

Thanks to quantum sensors, we can now hear those beats more clearly. We can read the pulses, trace the tremors, and act before they bring down the systems we depend on.

The Earth’s magnetic field is both protector and threat. It shields us from the fury of the Sun, but when disturbed it can send that fury surging through our grids and satellites.

Listening carefully is no longer optional. It is how we will keep the lights on when the next storm arrives.

Story: Ben Gilliland

Putting quantum fingers on the Earth’s magnetic pulse was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In Star Trek, the tricorder was a tool of everyday exploration. Crew members pointed it at rocks, plants, or even patients, and it told them what they were dealing with. The idea of a handheld device that could instantly analyse the contents of a sealed bottle or closed box felt firmly in the realm of fiction.

Today, something surprisingly close exists in the real world and it is based on science developed at the Central Laser Facility (CLF), in the UK. It doesn’t chirp or hum like its TV counterpart, but this scanner can see through packaging, identify hidden chemicals, and give fast, reliable answers. Instead of being used on alien planets, it’s helping on Earth — where the threats are not Klingons, but counterfeit medicines and tainted food.

Bad medicine

Across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa, communities have faced repeated public health disasters: including cough syrups contaminated with ethylene glycol (EG) or diethylene glycol (DEG). These chemicals are cheap, sweet-tasting substitutes for pharmaceutical-grade ingredients. They are also toxic.

The human cost is severe. In The Gambia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan between 2022 and 2023, contaminated syrups were linked to more than 300 child deaths. In Panama in 2006, 78 people died after taking DEG-tainted medicine. Outbreaks stretch back decades, with fatality rates in some cases approaching 98 per cent.

Sweet death

EG and DEG are not immediately destructive in the form they’re swallowed. The danger comes when the body metabolises them.

Ethylene glycol is broken down in the liver into glycolic acid and then oxalic acid. Oxalic acid binds to calcium in the blood, forming crystals that lodge in the kidneys. These crystals block filtration, damage tissue, and trigger acute kidney failure.

Diethylene glycol follows a similar path but produces diglycolic acid, which builds up in kidney cells and destroys them from within. Both chemicals can also cause metabolic acidosis — a dangerous drop in blood pH — and damage to the nervous system.

Early symptoms mimic common illness: vomiting, abdominal pain, drowsiness. But within days, the damage can become irreversible. In many outbreaks, victims die before the true cause is suspected.

A problem that crosses borders

Modern pharmaceutical supply chains cross continents. Ingredients may be manufactured in one region, processed in another, bottled in a third, and sold in a fourth.

That complexity creates gaps in oversight. Even well-resourced regulators can’t test every shipment. In lower-income countries, lab testing is often slow and expensive, so only a fraction of medicines are checked.

If health workers could quickly check a bottle on the spot, dangerous products could be stopped before they reached patients.

How to listen to molecules

SORS works by detecting the faint light signature unique to each chemical.

When a laser beam hits a material, most of the light bounces back unchanged. But a small fraction interacts with the molecules, scattering in a way that reveals their structure. This is called a Raman signal, and it acts like a fingerprint.

The challenge comes when you try to scan a liquid inside a sealed container. The strong signal from the glass or plastic drowns out the faint signature of the liquid.

SORS solves this by shifting the point where the scattered light is collected, just slightly away from the laser’s target. This ‘spatial offset’ reduces the signal from the container and lets the liquid’s fingerprint emerge.

It’s like standing to the side of a noisy crowd so you can hear the quiet voice behind it.

From physics to fieldwork

SORS began as a fundamental physics project exploring how light behaves in complex materials. The CLF team had the idea to turn this piece of science born of curiosity into a method to see through layers and identify hidden chemicals. Turning that into a portable, reliable device required new engineering.

In collaboration with the University of Oxford ((project lead: Prof. Paul Newton), Agilent Technologies, and the University of East London, the team built a handheld SORS scanner. They tested it on cough syrups spiked with EG and DEG. In repeated trials, the device detected contamination levels of 1–5 per cent within seconds.

It doesn’t replace detailed lab analysis, which can detect far lower concentrations. But it can flag the most dangerous batches instantly, giving inspectors and health workers a powerful screening tool.

Going commercial

The success of these trials attracted commercial interest. Agilent Technologies (a major manufacturer of analytical instruments) acquired the technology, which meant that SORS could now be manufactured at scale and deployed worldwide.

Without an industrial pathway, many promising lab ideas never make it into the field. With Agilent’s involvement, SORS moved from research paper to deployable tool, ready for use at ports, warehouses, and clinics.

Why mobility matters

The strength of SORS lies in its ability to work through sealed containers, anywhere.

A customs officer in West Africa could check imported cough syrups at the dock. A health inspector in Pakistan could screen stock before it reached clinics. A food trader in Southeast Asia could confirm a shipment’s authenticity on arrival.

Instead of sending samples to a distant lab and waiting days for results, decisions can be made in minutes. That speed can be the difference between stopping a dangerous product at the border and recalling it after it’s already in circulation.

Honey laundering

The same technology that can spot poisons in medicine can also catch a different kind of fraud: adulterated honey.

Honey is a high-value product, and global trade makes it vulnerable to dilution with cheaper sugar syrups made from rice, beet, or corn. Some syrups are chemically tweaked to mimic the sugar profile of real honey, making them hard to detect without specialist lab tests.

At CLF, scientists used SORS to scan sealed jars of honey. They combined the results with machine learning, training the system to distinguish pure honey from adulterated. It identified over 96 per cent of fakes correctly, and mislabelled pure honey in only around 1 per cent of cases.

In many cases, it could even name the type and proportion of syrup used.

A wider fight

The principles behind SORS could help tackle many challenges: counterfeit alcohol, tainted cooking oils, even illegal wildlife products. Anywhere there’s a need to verify what’s inside without opening it, SORS could contribute.

In the case of contaminated cough syrup, the stakes are measured in lives saved. Stopping a single batch could prevent dozens of deaths.

In food fraud, the stakes are economic and environmental. Large-scale honey adulteration harms beekeepers, distorts markets, and can involve organised crime. Tools like SORS change the economics of fraud, making it harder and riskier to profit.

What comes next?

SORS started as a clever way to look through layers without breaking them open. In the years ahead, its reach could grow far beyond syrups and honey.

One direction is miniaturisation — creating scanners small enough to carry in a pocket. Linked to cloud databases, they could share chemical fingerprints instantly, letting inspectors in different countries work from the same global reference library.

Another is advanced analysis. By pairing SORS with artificial intelligence, scanners could not just flag a problem but identify the contaminant, its concentration, and potentially its origin. That could help trace counterfeit networks or pinpoint sources of food fraud.

Beyond health and trade, SORS could help in environmental monitoring, scanning sealed waste containers, or checking chemical hazards without exposing responders to danger.

The common need is speed, accuracy, and accessibility. The more widely and cheaply the scanners are deployed, the more they can intercept harmful products before they do damage.

When the CLF team first tried SORS, it was a piece of physics looking for a problem. Now it’s part of the solution to some of the most pressing safety and fraud challenges in global supply chains.

Story by: Ben Gilliland

Read more about SORS here:

Honey laundering: how lasers are unmasking a global fraud

According to some estimates as much as half the honey on our shelves might not be as pure as you might expect. Scientists are turning to lasers to fight honey fraud.

Bad medicine: Detecting death in tainted syrups was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A decade after scientists first detected gravitational waves, the clearest signal yet has confirmed two of the biggest ideas about black holes. And UK scientists are celebrating their central role in a discovery that continues to reshape our view of the cosmos.

The latest event, labelled GW250114, was picked up in January 2025. It came from two black holes, each 30-40 times the mass of our Sun, colliding 1.3 billion light-years away. The merger produced a new black hole bigger than the sum of its parts and, in the process, sent ripples through spacetime that reached Earth.

Hawking’s area theorem passes the test

In 1971, Stephen Hawking proposed that when black holes merge, the total area of their event horizons cannot shrink. The new signal provides the strongest proof yet that this is the case. The initial black holes had a combined surface area of 240,000 square kilometres, which is roughly the size of the UK.

Once the two combined, the resulting black hole’s area was around 400,000 square kilometres, about twice that. Hawking’s prediction holds true, with a confidence level of 99.999 per cent.

The Kerr nature of black holes

Another long-standing idea has also been confirmed. In 1963, New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr described how space and time behave around a spinning black hole. For decades, physicists assumed his equations described reality. Now, data from GW250114 provide direct evidence that real black holes do indeed match Kerr’s description.

Gregorio Carullo, Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham, said:

“Given the clarity of the signal produced by GW250114, for the first time we could pick out two ‘tones’ from the black hole voices and confirm that they behave according to Kerr’s prediction.”

From doubt to certainty

Ten years ago, on 14 September 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected ripples in space-time caused by two colliding black holes over a billion light-years away. The discovery, which earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2017, opened an entirely new window on the Universe.

Until this detection, scientists were not even sure black holes collided at all. Today, thanks to the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) network, collision detections happen weekly. More than 300 candidate signals have been recorded, creating the first census of black holes in the Universe.

Professor Stephen Fairhurst of Cardiff University, current spokesperson of the collaboration, said:

“A decade ago we couldn’t be certain that black holes ever collide. Now we observe several black-hole mergers per week. We’ve already found surprises, from black holes just four times the mass of the Sun to others over 100 times the mass of the Sun.”

Technology built in Britain

The UK’s role goes beyond pure analysis. British scientists and engineers from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), working in collaboration with Glasgow, Strathclyde, Birmingham and Cardiff universities, helped design the suspension systems that isolate LIGO’s mirrors from seismic noise, making the first detection possible.

More recently, they have delivered new beam splitter and relay suspension systems as part of the LIGO A+ upgrade.

Professor Hartmut Grote of Cardiff University said:

“The LIGO detectors have been enhanced during the O4 run with electronics built in Cardiff, which contributed to achieving higher sensitivity than in previous runs. It’s exciting that technology developed here is having a direct impact on how we hear and understand the Universe.”

Clearer than ever

The GW250114 event is not only important for what it proved, but for how clearly it was detected. A decade of improvements means today’s detectors can capture signals with unprecedented precision.

Dr John Veitch from the University of Glasgow said:

“This latest event was really reminiscent of our first detection in 2015. The difference is that almost a decade of technological improvements mean that our detectors could make a much clearer detection of this year’s signal.”

Measuring the expansion of the Universe

The growing catalogue of events is also feeding into cosmology. By combining gravitational wave data with other observations, scientists are refining estimates of the Hubble constant, which describes the rate at which the Universe is expanding.

Professor Tessa Baker from the University of Portsmouth said:

“These new events have allowed us to refine our measurements of how fast the Universe is expanding — arguably the most crucial and hotly debated number in current cosmology.”

A multi-messenger revolution

In 2017, the field expanded again when a neutron star merger was seen both through gravitational waves and light. This ‘multi-messenger’ astronomy gave new insight into the origins of heavy elements and confirmed that almost all elements heavier than iron are made in such cataclysmic events. Scientists hope for more such detections in the years ahead.

What lies ahead

The LVK collaboration is already planning future observatories, including the Einstein Telescope in Europe, Cosmic Explorer in the US, and LIGO India. These facilities will be able to detect fainter signals from further across the Universe, expanding the reach of gravitational wave astronomy.

Professor Sheila Rowan of the University of Glasgow put it simply:

“We’ve achieved a remarkable amount in the first 10 years of gravitational wave astronomy, but the Universe is ringing with the faintest echoes of past cosmic events, and we’re only just getting started on listening to what they have to tell us.”

In just ten years, gravitational wave astronomy has gone from a single detection to hundreds. It has confirmed Hawking’s theorem, validated Kerr’s equations, refined the rate of cosmic expansion, and revealed new populations of black holes. The UK’s contributions — from mirror suspensions to data analysis — have been essential at every step.

The Universe is full of collisions and mergers that shake the fabric of spacetime. Thanks to gravitational wave science, we can hear them and learn from their echoes across the cosmos.

Story by: Ben Gilliland

Read more about Gravitational waves here:

Everything you need to know about gravitational waves

The first direct detection of gravitational waves back in September 2015 was hailed as the discovery of the century, with the potential to revolutionise the way we study the Universe. But what are gravitational waves, where did they come from and why should we care?

The next generation of gravitational waves detectors

It’s not just massive gravitational objects that have been making waves in the field of gravitational wave research, the UK has also been making waves for more than 40 years (now that’s how you strain a metaphor).

Gravitational waves prove Stephen Hawking’s black hole theorem was originally published in Big Science at STFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.