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The universe has been growing since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. But cosmologists can’t agree on how fast it is expanding. A new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests a radical new idea that might resolve this astronomical problem – perhaps the universe is spinning very slowly. For […]

An 1800-year old human skeleton unearthed from a Roman cemetery has revealed bite marks consistent with a large cat, like a lion, and is being called the first hard evidence of human-animal combat in England during the Roman Empire. Archaeologists say the man may have died as part of a gladiator show or execution, and […]

Water is critical to life on our planet, but the conventional theory of how it ended up being so abundant on Earth might be completely wrong. The most popular theory is that water made its way to Earth from asteroids bombarding the surface of our planet for about 100 million years when it was very […]

Giant kangaroos should have giant home ranges, but researchers were shocked to find that the largest of them all, Protemnodon, was a real homebody. Habitat, not body size was the key says lead researcher, Dr Chris Laurikainen Gaete, from the University of Wollongong. Protemnodon was a genus of the giant forest kangaroos that lived until […]

The fascinating behaviour of origami has inspired engineers to design a structure that twists when compressed and shrinks when twisted. The structure is a “metamaterial”; a class of engineered materials that exhibit behaviour not seen in nature and whose properties depend on their structure rather than chemical composition. These materials can have applications ranging from […]

In the 11th century in Cairo, the foundations for modern science were laid through the detention of an innocent man. The mathematician Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham had been tasked with regulating the flow of the Nile, but when he saw the river that had shaped 4,000 years of human civilization, the hubris of the […]

A new study of Australian birds examines how for some species their personality shines through in the songs. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, is based on observations of wild superb-fairy wrens (Malurus cyaneus), a common, small bird in southeastern Australia. Very few previous studies have sought to understand the relationship between the […]

A new nickel-based super-metal alloy that maintains strength and flexibility over an 800oC temperature range has been developed in Korea. A team at researchers at the Republic of Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) called its high entropy allow (HEA) the first of the ‘hyperadaptors’. “Our HEA breaks through the limitations of existing […]

El Niño, a climate troublemaker, has long been one of the largest drivers of variability in the global climate. Every few years, the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean seesaws between warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) phases. This reshuffles rainfall patterns, unleashing floods, droughts and storms thousands of miles from the Pacific origin. The 1997-98 […]

Scientists from 19 nations, including Australia and New Zealand, have been selected to compete for the annual Frontiers Planet Prize, the world’s largest science prize.  Each “National Champion” has been chosen for their scalable solutions to help keep humanity safely within planetary sustainability boundaries. In June the Swiss based science philanthropic organisation will whittle down […]

Wild fig trees may provide a biomonitoring tool for illegal gold mining in the Amazon. Gold, sought after and fought over for millennia, is found in the Amazon rainforest although artisanal and small-scale gold mines are often illegal. Mercury, (Hg) used for separating gold, is a major health and environmental problem. Mercury is added to […]

Storing compressed air in old oil wells and releasing it later to drive energy turbines looks promising as a more sustainable energy source according to the latest models from the USA. The process is known as Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). Pennsylvania State university researchers have turbocharged the performance of CAES, a struggling renewable energy […]

The Andean glaciers, predominately located along the border between Chile and Argentina, are in rapid decline. These ice reserves which are critical to the water supplies of 90 million people across South America, are thinning by 0.7 metres a year—35% faster than the global average.            In late March, at the first-ever World Day for […]

An international study has revealed fresh insights into global methane emissions using innovative multi-isotopic atmospheric measurements. Researchers using advanced isotopic analysis, including radiocarbon and stable isotopes of carbon and hydrogen, were able to accurately distinguish between the different sources of methane (CH4) emissions. Essentially, by looking at the “fingerprints” of methane molecules, the researchers could […]

By Richard Musgrove Scientists will be able to better identify which amphibian species will be most impacted by climate change, thanks to a new study by UNSW researchers. Amphibians, including frogs, toads, salamanders and newts, are the world’s most at-risk vertebrates, with more than 40% of species facing anthropogenic threats.  [IM1] [RM2]  Ectothermy, also referred to […]

Here’s how the story of the Taung Child fossil skull is usually told: In 1924 an Australian anthropologist and anatomist, Raymond Dart, acquired a block of calcified sediment from a limestone quarry in South Africa. He painstakingly removed a fossil skull from this material. A few months later, on 7 February 1925, he published his […]

The phrase ‘animal architect’ may conjure up an image of a beaver adding one last stick to its dam, or a termite scurrying inside its 3-metre-tall mound. The feats of these individual species are impressive – but a new way of interpreting animal impact has resulted in a calculation which adds up the combined engineering […]

From monitoring Antarctica’s delicate ecosystem and navigating treacherous bushfire zones to designing innovative amphibious robots, Australia’s next generation of female roboticists are tackling transformative projects. Brittany Gorry, Angelina Fantasia, and Jessica Gumowski have begun their postgraduate research studies at QUT’s Centre for Robotics and at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, supported by our Alberto Elfes Memorial Scholarship Fund. […]

A new model is the first to explain how the lightest known neutron star formed. The binary system, called J0453+1559, was first reported in 2013 which involves a pair of neutron stars orbiting each other every 4.07 days. The system has been subject to detailed observations as it is only 4,000 light-years from Earth. One […]

Coconut trees are iconic plants found across the world’s tropical regions. They’re called “nature’s supermarket” or the “tree of life” in several cultures because every part of the coconut tree is used. Its leaves can be used to thatch homes, its heart can be eaten and its roots have medicinal uses. The refreshing liquid found […]

A 30m sediment core extracted from an underwater cave has given scientists a glimpse into the past, showing how tropical cyclones have changed in the Caribbean over 5,700 years. The research team, led by Eberhard Gischler from Germany’s Goethe University Frankfurt, identified and dated 574 different storm events visible in the sediment core. What they […]

For 170 years, botanists have believed that the rare daisy fleabane (Erigeron conyzoides) is an Australian native flower. First described in 1855, the species is restricted to the alpine areas of NSW and Victoria. But it hasn’t been collected in NSW since 1978, and was recently listed as endangered in Victoria after not being sighted […]

An accidental discovery could provide clues to a chicken-or-egg question which has puzzled scientists for decades: what came first – oxygen production by photosynthesis or oxygen consumption by aerobic metabolism? Roughly 2.4 billion years ago, a major shift occurred that would change our planet and its life forms forever. Known as the Great Oxidation Event, […]

Chinese researchers were surprised to find growth in coastal glaciers in East Antarctica two years ago, prompting them to remind the scientific community to pay more attention to the region. Antarctica is losing about 136 billion tonnes of ice per year, with Greenland almost double that, at 267 billion tonnes, says NASA.  These two ice […]