Bookmarks (313)

Back in 2006, children from the Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club went on a fossil-hunting field trip and stumbled across the bones of a giant fossil penguin. Little did they know that those bones belonged to an entirely new species. Extinct giant penguin fossil was a new species The fossilised penguin had to be cut out […]

Australia will be building, using – and crewing – nuclear submarines under a new deal with the United Kingdom and United States. While there are many interesting economic and geopolitical implications from this, it’s worth taking a closer look at the subs themselves: what exactly is a nuclear submarine, how does it differ from our […]

The Pitjantjatjara word ‘Kanyini’ means “an enormous caring with no limit; it has no timeframe and is eternal”. It’s also the name of the first satellite designed and built in South Australia – a name put forward by Findon High School students and chosen out of entries from 57 schools across the state. “Kanyini means […]

Nuclear-powered submarines may soon patrol the waters surrounding Australia, as the country has just struck a historic deal with the US and UK. In the newly forged AUKUS partnership, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made a deal with US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to share the secret nuclear technology. “The […]

Australia, the land girt by sea, may seem like an isolated country, but is part of a wider ecosystem in the Asian-Pacific – especially when it comes to food. As food scarcity threatens, is food security a problem we need to tackle as a collective? What is Australia’s role in achieving food security in the […]

It’s a story that has all the makings of a good science-fiction thriller – intrigue, an explosive romantic breakdown and frozen-body snatching – only, it’s true. This week, a bitter corporate dispute between a former wife and husband in Moscow, Russia, descended into the absurd when the aggrieved former wife seized the frozen bodies and […]

Australia’s 2019/20 bushfires were a crisis on an epic scale. Not only did they burn through an estimated 18 million hectares of land, killing at least 34 people and up to a billion animals, they also had complex and far-reaching after-effects, from browning New Zealand glaciers with soot to carpeting the skies across the southern […]

Aging stem cells might hold clues for treating osteoporosis, according to new research. As we get old, our bones become weak and brittle, so even a minor bump could cause a broken bone. In Australia, over 900,000 people – almost 4% of the population – have osteoporosis, a condition common among the elderly that causes bones to […]

Last week, the West Australian government committed to ending native forest logging in the state’s southwest by 2024, and phasing out logging in all native forests by 2033. This unprecedented move has stunned environmental campaigners and foresters alike. The move is divisive, and emblematic of a much bigger, nationwide struggle between the native logging sector […]

A dash of astronaut blood, a pinch of urine and a serving of space dust – mix it together and what do you get? Houses, according to a study published in Materials Today Bio. Scientists from the University of Manchester, UK, blended up a grisly concoction of blood, urine and ‘space’ dust to make brick […]

Black holes aren’t as single-minded as we thought. It turns out their quantum behaviour adds a new, recalcitrant dimension to their monstrous character. In a first-of-its-kind discovery, UK physicists have found that black holes exert quantum pressure on their environment. We know black holes are voracious cosmic monsters that operate at nature’s very extremes. They […]

“We can automate nearly everything, can’t we? We can fly to the moon, but we can’t make one of these methods simple enough for a farmer on their own to undertake.” Director of Carbon Farmers of Australia Louisa Kiely says there’s never been a better time to sell carbon offsets. Australian carbon credit units have […]

Frogs have been vanishing in concerning numbers along the east coast of Australia since June, and we’re not yet sure why. Cosmos spoke to Dr Jodi Rowley, reptile and amphibian curator at the Australian Museum, about how scientists and the public are working together to find out what could be causing this worrying die-off. What […]

An international team of researchers has generated an entire virtual universe and uploaded it to the “cloud”. They then made it freely available to anyone who wants to explore the cosmos without the pesky laws of physics (and economics) getting in their way. Uchuu (meaning “outer space” in Japanese) is the largest and most realistic […]

We have talked about polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests before. But the ‘in the wild’ diagnostic methods are slightly different from what is used in the lab. There are multiple ways to visualise DNA. Traditionally, DNA acts as a template for the PCR, and the result is visualised on a gel electrophoresis. The problem with testing […]

A few weeks ago, I discovered that some of my friends – you know who you are – weren’t planning to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Some of you said you lacked trust in the evidence provided for the safety of vaccines. On the other hand, you were confident about alternative therapies, mostly Ivermectin. I’ll admit to […]

Unlike the huge amount of high-quality data we have gathered on vaccines (5.6 billion doses and counting), the available data on Ivermectin is a dog’s breakfast – despite the fact that millions of people around the world have used it to treat COVID, especially in poor countries. The hope that Ivermectin could vanquish COVID was […]

The COVID vaccines have rare – but serious – side effects. Based on 21 million vaccinated Australians (and 5.6 billion globally) we can base our calculation of benefit versus risk on hard numbers. (See rollout risk versus benefit.)  But some of my vaccine-hesitant friends are getting alarmed by a very fluffy set of figures. These […]

AstraZeneca at large January 2021 witnessed the first national rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK. The good news was that it was 89% effective at protecting people from symptomatic disease. The bad news was an unusual blood clotting syndrome that started surfacing in March 2021. Blood clots are not uncommon – they occur […]

Cows contribute massively greenhouse gases they produce. We’re not talking hot air here. It’s the No1 and No2s. Which is why potty training can be part of the solution. On farms, cows graze freely, but that also means they poo and pee freely too. Unfortunately, this waste often contaminates the soil and waterways.  On the […]

NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars has at last found a rock that’s a hard place. After an initial failed attempt last month, the robotic prospector has successfully drilled two core samples from a Martian rock and stowed them away for eventual return to Earth. An unexpected failure occurred in early August when Perseverance attempted to […]

Wild storms have wrecked seahorse habitats across the Australian east coast. Vast volumes of sand smothered the soft coral, sponge and seagrass homes of the White’s seahorse. As a result, about 90 per cent of the population was destroyed.  Now the race is on to rehouse the survivors.   Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney […]

A few weeks ago, a group of Martu rangers working with Indigenous organisation Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa caught sight of the elusive night parrot. Fewer than 30 people have seen a live night parrot this century, making this sighting – on Martu country, in northern Western Australia – a rare and exciting event. One of the rangers […]

Moths vs bats: moths use sound to thwart bat attacks Who would win in a bat-moth fight? A new study has found that moths have more of a leg-up than previously thought, because their wings are structured to mess up the echolocation of bats. Researchers from the University of Bristol have found that the wingtips […]

On 20 July 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon, speaking the now ubiquitous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The Moon landing rocketed the United States ahead of the Soviet Union in the “race to space”. NASA says the race […]

Every year, the science humour magazine the Annals of Improbable Research awards the Ig Nobel Prizes – a riff on the prestigious Nobel Prizes, for weird and wacky research that “first makes people laugh, and then think”. This year, the pickings are particularly hilarious. We’ve ranked our top five for your reading pleasure. 5. Why […]

Australians are keener on the jab – including for their kids Nearly 80% of Australian parents want to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19, once a vaccine becomes available for them, according to research done by the Australian National University. The research is based on the most recent round of results from ANU’s COVID-19 Impact […]

In a world-first, researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand have observed a disabled kea use tools for self-care. Bruce the kea is missing the top half of his beak from a suspected pest trap accident, but he has learned to carefully select and use pebbles to help preen his feathers. We’ve known […]

What is dark energy? Dark energy is without a doubt the weirdest thing in the universe. Despite being present in every corner of the cosmos and dominating its evolution, dark energy is so far outside our best existing theories of physics that we’re still trying to figure out if it’s something in the universe or […]

This article on the Western Green Energy Hub first appeared in Cosmos Weekly on 3 September 2021. For more stories like this, subscribe to Cosmos Weekly. At 15,000 square kilometres, the size of the recently proposed Western Green Energy Hub in Western Australia is hard to fathom. That’s half the size of Belgium – larger […]

By Katie Attwell, The University of Western Australia Even before any COVID-19 vaccines were invented, vaccine passports for participation in public activities appeared likely. Australia’s plagued vaccine rollout meant such requirements lay in a distant future — until now. Australian political leaders have begun talking about a two-track future. Proof of vaccination is already required […]

A group of Queensland researchers have used mining waste to make a catalyst that could render hydrogen fuel production cheaper and more efficient. Hydrogen gas, which can be made by electrolysing water, should be a critical clean fuel by mid-century. The electrolysis process needs metals to catalyse it – and generally, expensive precious metals do […]

Every week, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) releases a summary of all reported adverse events that happen following a COVID-19 vaccination. Along with this, the TGA continuously monitors the administration of medicines and vaccines. The reports are long and can be very dense, so Cosmos breaks them down into bite-sized pieces. Report date: 9th September […]

If you climbed down through the branches of the evolutionary tree, from child to parent for countless generations, you would eventually meet the greatest-grandparent of us all. But when did that animal evolve? And would we know it when we saw it? The new Nilpena Ediacara National Park, five hours north of Adelaide, South Australia, […]

Eat your young, load up on supplements, and woo the ladies – it’s all in a day’s work for male milkweed butterflies, according to new research. In a study that would make Hannibal Lecter proud, published in Ecology, researchers investigated a strange cannibalistic mating ritual, where male milkweed butterflies (Danainae subfamily) harassed, subdued, and subsequently […]

Chronic pain is a global health burden. In Australia, it is estimated that over 3.4 million people suffer from persistent pain. Nonetheless, a lack of therapeutics has led to overprescription of opioids, which provide only limited relief in patients with chronic neuropathic pain and can lead to severe adverse effects, including addiction and overdose. Neuropathic […]

Scientists have created spectacular maps of drowned worlds beneath the North Sea, revealing enormous channels forged during the last ice age. “In the way that we can leave footprints in the sand, glaciers leave an imprint on the land upon which they flow,” explains James Kirkham, a geophysicist from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and […]

Today is R U OK? Day, an annual moment to reflect on mental-health harm prevention through the simple act of reaching out. This year’s R U OK? Day comes at a time when vast swathes of the country are in lockdown, and many people are suffering the long-term mental health effects that come with a […]

To have half a chance of meeting the Paris Agreement targets, 90% of the world’s coal and 60% of its oil and gas must remain in the ground, according to new research. The modelling also suggests that Australia (along with the rest of the Pacific) must leave at least 95% of its coal, 40% of […]

The kākāpō (Strigops habroptila), the world’s heaviest and arguably dumbest parrot, doesn’t seem to suffer from a history of inbreeding, according to a study published in Cell Genomics. The critically endangered bird is native to Aotearoa/New Zealand, and is known for clumsily falling out of trees (it is flightless), freezing in the face of impending […]

Palaeontologists have dug up a brand new animal species from the Cambrian era, more than 500 million years ago. Remarkably, Titanokorys gainesi was about half a metre long – which is giant compared to most of the other, pinky-finger-sized species alive at the time. “The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling,” says Jean-Bernard […]

The ability to 3D print satellite parts sounds like something out of science fiction, but Swinburne University of Technology is planning to do just that. The university will install an elaborate 3D-printing system, built by additive manufacturing company Titomic, next year. The system will be able to print a range of different substances – including […]

The federal government recently awarded $50 million in grants to private energy companies to fund the exploratory drilling of the Beetaloo Basin, as part of its heavily criticised “gas-led recovery”. The 28,000 square kilometre Beetaloo region begins about 500 kilometres southeast of Darwin in the NT. The region, which includes Aboriginal lands and pastoral leases, […]

It’s been a more than 70-year mystery in the making, but now we may finally understand how the leopard got its spots – thanks in part to the decades-old workings of one of the UK’s greatest minds. In 1952, Alan Turing – more famous as the code-busting war hero ultimately destroyed by the country he […]

If you’re a black tea fan, you may have noticed the thin, oily film that sometimes forms on the top of the drink. Why does this happen? According to new research, the answer lies not only with the chemistry of the tea, but its physics: specifically, its fluid dynamics. The oily film on black tea […]

Some warm-blooded animals are “shapeshifting” in response to a warming climate, growing larger legs, beaks and ears at extremely fast rates to better regulate their body temperatures. “There are these bio-geographical rules that describe trends in body shape, and one of these is called Allen’s rule,” says Sara Ryding, a bird researcher at Deakin University […]

The Australian Acoustic Observatory (A2O) is a continental-scale acoustic sensor network, designed to collect data over five years from 90 sites across seven different Australian ecoregions. The A2O is futuristic and… well, kind of hard to explain. “It’s not actually the traditional sort of scientific project where you say, ‘hey, we’ve got a question – […]

The humble blue-tongue lizard, an iconic Aussie species, is resistant to the venom of the deadly red-bellied black snake, according to new research from the University of Queensland (UQ). The surprising find, detailed in a study out yesterday in the journal Toxins, was made when UQ scientists looked to compare the effects of various reptile […]

An international team of astronomers have shed light on a mysterious galactic phenomenon: elusive ultradiffuse galaxies. Ultradiffuse galaxies (UDGs) are dwarf galaxies whose stars are spread out over a vast region, resulting in extremely low surface brightness, making them very difficult to detect. An international team of astronomers have used simulations to detect a few […]