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Scientists researching innovative ways to control invasive snails have discovered some unexpected vampiric qualities – they’re enthralled by the colour red and repelled by garlic. The findings, published in a paper in Scientific Reports, could help lessen invasive snails’ cost to Australian grain growers. At the moment, snails cost the industry $170 million annually. The […]

US researchers have figured out an environmentally friendly way to mix fluorine into carbon molecules using enzymes and light. The discovery illuminates a path for safer and more ecologically sound materials, particularly pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals. “This work could pave the way for new, greener technologies in chemical production,” says senior researcher Professor Huimin Zhao, […]

Meet Asiatyrannus xui, the latest addition to the tyrannosaur family. A. xui was discovered in 2017 at the Nanxiong Formation near Ganzhou City in southeastern China. It lived about 69 million years ago, toward the end of the Cretaceous period (145 – 66 million years ago) only a few million years before the mass extinction […]

Southwest of Broome, on the northern West Australian coast, a narrow strip of pastoral land separates the Indian Ocean from the Great Sandy Desert. In a few years’ time, this thin band of country might become a passageway for cane toads to invade the sensitive Pilbara region. Or – if an ambitious plan succeeds – […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) JUICE mission is on its way back to Earth. But it won’t be staying long. JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) is about to do something no other spacecraft has done before. It’s about to attempt a “slingshot” manoeuvre as it plots its course to the largest planet in our solar […]

Hardware and software are the two elements that make any computing device functional. Hardware refers to physical components, such as the processor, hard drives, RAM and motherboard. These components are tangible and can be physically touched. Software refers to the set of instructions or programs that tell the hardware what to do. It includes operating […]

Artificial heart implanted in patient with end-stage heart failure The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH), invented by Australian Dr Daniel Timms, has been successfully implanted in a human for the first time. The implantation occurred on 9 July as part of a US Food and Drug Administration Early Feasibility Study, which aims to evaluate the […]

A multidisciplinary team of researchers has leveraged a rich fossil record and cutting-edge computer modelling to recreate moa extinctions on Aotearoa New Zealand. Understanding their behaviour can provide contemporary scientists with tools to conserve present day flightless birds under pressure from habitat loss. Moas were a group of large flightless birds that went extinct 100-300 […]

A genetic study of nearly all living bird species has found that the first one to evolve likely had shiny, colourful, iridescent feathers. The study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, also found, contrary to current belief, more cases of iridescence in birds outside the tropics. “For decades, scientists have had this hypothesis that there […]

A black hole represents one of the universe’s most enigmatic and powerful phenomena. New black holes are formed when massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and collapse under their own gravity. This process condenses a star’s mass into an incredibly small area, creating a point in space where the gravitational pull is so powerful that […]

NASA’s Fermi Telescope has revealed new details about the brightest of all time gamma-ray burst which may help explain these extreme and mysterious cosmic events. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) usually last less than a second. They originate from the dense remains of a dead giant star’s core, called a neutron star. But what causes neutron stars […]

The enigmatic question about possible life on Mars continues to baffle scientists, who earlier this month said the Red Planet was probably too cold for life to exist, but now they’ve found what they describe as “the first compelling detection of organic material,” on the plant. Now a leopard-spotted rock on Mars might hold the […]

The world has broken a record for hottest day set just 24 hours beforehand. According to the European Union’s climate monitoring program, the global average temperature was 17.16°C on 22 July. This beats the previous record of 17.09°C set on 21 July 2024, which had in turn beaten a record set in 2023. On 23 […]

Despite living just before the invention of the telescope, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe made huge contributions to European astronomy. He was also, like many scientists of his era, a very keen and secretive alchemist. His castle, called Uraniborg, was fitted with observatories in its towers and an alchemy laboratory in the basement. The building […]

A taco-shaped arthropod – or “tacopod” as I shall affectionately refer to it henceforth – which has long eluded classification has finally been identified as one of the first creatures to have mandibles. The tacopod is actually called Odaraia alata. It was about 15cm long and lived during the middle of the Cambrian period (541–485 […]

The global chemical industry has been grappling with a big problem: manufacturing  releases carbon dioxide. The industry emits nearly a billion tonnes of CO2 each year, more than double Australia’s national output. Industrial chemicals, which end up everywhere from fertilisers on farms to polyester in T-shirts, require energy to make, sometimes in very high amounts. […]

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has been cleared to return to flight following the rare failure on July 11, which resulted in all 20 Starlink satellites from the launch re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere and burning up. Following SpaceX’s public safety determination request on July 15, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave approval for the Falcon 9 […]

After death, the human body undergoes a series of natural processes as it begins to decompose. Somatic death occurs when all vital signs irreversibly stop, namely breathing, heartbeat and brain function. Immediately after death, all the muscles in the body relax, a state known as primary relaxation. Within minutes, the body starts to cool down […]

South Australian satellite Kanyini’s highly anticipated launch has been delayed following an incident during the SpaceX Starlink Group 9-3 mission last month. After a successful launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 11, the Falcon 9 rocket experienced a rare failure of its second stage, which normally fires up to deliver […]

Dinosaurs are well known and loved for the immense size these ancient creatures used to reach. But could some have been even bigger than we think? New mathematical modelling suggests that some individuals during the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ might have grown to truly monstrous proportions, like massive individuals of animals today. For instance, the average […]

For the first time, physicists have developed a quantum sensor capable of detecting magnetic fields at the scale of atoms. Atoms range in diameter from 0.1–0.5 nanometres. That’s about one ten-billionth of a metre, or roughly a millionth the width of a human hair. At this scale, the strange effects of quantum mechanics dominate, making […]

Cybersecurity failures and cybercrime continually make the news. To protect yourself from complex cybersecurity threats, no one defence is sufficient. Instead, a multifaceted approach is essential. First, ensure your software, including your operating system and applications, are up-to-date. Software developers regularly release updates to patch vulnerabilities that cybercriminals exploit. Second, use strong, unique passwords for […]

New Zealand Minister for Space, Judith Collins, has announced 4 new research projects under the Australia-New Zealand Collaborative Space Program. Among the expected outcomes is a project to monitor the southern Indo Pacific from space, including methane and other greenhouse gas emissions. The news was delivered as part of Collins’ speech at the 17th Australian […]

Astronomers  using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a huge exoplanet less than 12 light-years from Earth. The planet, a gas giant 6 times the size of Jupiter, is the coldest and oldest exoplanet ever directly imaged (that is, not found through indirect means like observing a star). The international team has published its […]