Look to the skies: rare chance to see candidate for Star of Bethlehem?
Right on the solstice, a ‘great conjunction’ of Jupiter and Saturn will occur when the two planets converge shortly after sunset Australia time tonight, Monday 21 December. They will appear almost as one…
Aussie Anne Abbott wins John Maddox Prize for ‘Standing up for Science’
While the main John Maddox Prize for 2020 goes to Anthony Fauci and Salim Abdool Karim for their communication of evidence during the Covid-19 pandemic, the judges have again this year chosen to…
Lorikeets rule as 4.6 million birds are counted in 7 days
The 2020 Aussie Backyard Bird Count achieves a record response for citizen-based science. Unprecedented numbers of people across Australia took part in BirdLife Australia’s popular 2020 Aussie Backyard Bird Count, which ran from…
Teaching humans to hibernate
The idea of making astronauts hibernate on long space missions often appears in science fiction, but now it is one step closer to reality. Scientists from the University of Tsukuba in Japan have…
Solar panels that sweat…
Engineers across the world are searching for way to improve the efficiency of solar panels. As new materials and designs are tested, any efficiency improvement – even a few percent – is announced…
Martian colonists could live in ancient volcanic lava tunnels
Scientists have discovered the safest place to build a permanent base on Mars: lava tunnels created by volcanoes that are now extinct. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a magnetic field that protects…
A one-way ticket to Keplar-20b
Could we ever get home from a super-Earth? It’s hard enough for huge rockets to provide the energy required to launch into orbit from Earth. But what if the field of gravity was…
UNSW Sydney launches virtual Museum of Human Disease
Staff at the Museum of Human Disease at UNSW Sydney have used their lockdown time wisely, by creating a virtual version of their collection of real organs and body parts, which constitute the…
Giant Camarasaurus dinosaurs had beaks
Scientists from the University of Bonn in Germany have solved a mystery that has bothered palaeontologists for years. Discoveries have been made in many places around the world of dinosaur teeth preserved in…
‘Crazy beast’ from the age of dinosaurs discovered
A new mammal from an essentially unknown group found only in the Southern Hemisphere has been revealed by international research involving palaeontologists from Monash University. The full fossil skeleton allows a reconstruction of…
