A TALE TO MATCH DEL BOY’S POCKET WATCH

Back in 2009, a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S was found at the home of compulsive hoarder, Dr Harold Carr. Carr died at the age of 89 in 2007, and his family went through his belongings at his home when they found the profitable discovery.

Dr Carr purchased the car in 1955 for the sum of £895 –around £30,000 today – from Lord Ridley after the car had changed hands several times already.

Dr Carr only drove the Bugatti for a few years and left there for nearly 50 years when his family discovered it. It went under the hammer at the Bonhams’ in Paris and sold for a staggering £3,043,293. His nephew later said: “We knew he had some cars, but we had no idea what they were. It’s a wonderful thing to leave.”

Space exploration has been the stuff of science fiction for years but a new material could be the key to building life on Mars.

Scientists at the University of Manchester have created StarCrete, made from a combination of space dust, salt and potato starch, and say it is the perfect solution to transporting heavy materials to the red planet.

It is said to be stronger than concrete with a compressive strength of 72 MPa –- compared to concrete’s 32 MPa. Potatoes aren’t the only ingredient that appears to work, with researchers putting their blood, spit, and tears into StarCrete. Lead researcher Dr Aled Roberts joked, “You don’t want to know what else I tried.”

An asteroid lit up the night sky over the English Channel after entering the Earth’s atmosphere in the early hours of February 13th. The 3ft meteoroid created a shooting star and an ‘airburst’ that could be seen as far away as Paris and London.

The rock, called 2023 CX1, entered the atmosphere around two miles off the French coast at 3am, creating a fireball as it disintegrated, finally landing in the sea. It was only the seventh time an asteroid strike had been successfully forecast in what the European Space Agency said was ‘a sign of the rapid advancements in global asteroid detection capabilities’. For scientists, forecasting harmless asteroids like this is seen as good practice for detecting ones that could pose a risk to the planet.

The airport has published its annual results for 2022 and is looking ahead to a promising summer