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Space agencies need to add expired medicine to the list of perils associated with long-term space travel. New research suggests that more than half of the medicines stocked on the International Space Station (ISS) would expire before astronauts could return from a multi-year mission to Mars. According to the study, published in the Nature journal […]

The world has once again seen its hottest day on record, toppling the previous high from 2023. The record might already have been broken. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which uses satellite data to monitor global weather conditions, has recorded a new global high of 17.09°C. Prior to July last year, world […]

Monotremes are weird animals. They’re famously the only mammals to lay eggs instead of live young. But did you know that they also have bizarre stomachs more akin to some fish than other mammals? Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) gastric systems are abnormally small, and lack the glands for secreting enzymes and […]

Nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) might be a feasible source of power for Australia in the mid- to late-2040s, but are unlikely to be of use before then, according to a new report. The analysis, done by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), finds that the “least risky” option for Australia is […]

New research may have found a link between supermassive black holes and dark matter particles which might solve an issue which has irked astrophysicists for decades: the “final parsec problem.” Making gravitational waves Last year, an international team of researchers discovered a background “hum” of gravitational waves. They hypothesised that this background signal is emanating […]

An 18-metre-long vessel set sail earlier this month off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The boat is the largest ever reconstructed from the Bronze Age Magan culture. It was made using materials described on an ancient clay tablet and techniques dating back more than 4,000 years. The research project behind the reconstruction aims to deepen […]

A study of 252 chattering chimpanzees has found that their gestures have the same cadence as humans. The study, which is published in Current Biology, finds that chimps take turns when making signs at each other, at about the same speed that humans take turns in conversations. “While human languages are incredibly diverse, a hallmark […]

A worrying trend in the Earth’s ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere has climate scientists warning that more needs to be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Last week, Cosmos reported on a pre-print paper which found that global carbon sinks reached a 20-year low last year. “About of half of all CO2 emissions […]

Evidence of human occupation in southeast Indonesia 42,000 years ago sheds light on the route that ancient people took into the region including Australia. Archaeological finds were recovered at Elivavan on Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands. The island group is less than 600km north of Australian city Darwin, making them among the closest Indonesian island group to […]

Scientists have discovered a source of “dark oxygen” on the abyssal seafloor, a place where no sunlight can penetrate. The oxygen, which appears to be made from metals forming a natural battery, might play a role in the ecosystem of the deep ocean – or even the origins of life on Earth. The researchers say […]

For the first time, wild male African elephants have been documented using ‘let’s go’ rumbles to signal to their group that it’s time to move on. Until now, this behaviour was thought to be exclusive to dominant female elephants to keep tight-knit family groups together during coordinated departures. The vocalisations, detailed in a study in […]

An Australian expert is calling for greater regulatory enforcement to protect workers from cancer-causing welding fumes. At least 60,000 people are employed as welders in Australia. Worldwide, this number is estimated to be 11 million, with about 110 million more likely exposed to welding in the course of their work. A new survey of more […]

Samuel Pepys is famous for keeping an extremely detailed diary from 1660 to 1669, giving historians a fascinating view into middle-class life in 17th Century England. But he was also a lifetime admirer of fashion and clothes. His private library, which has been stored at the University of Cambridge, UK, for the past 300 years, […]

Sifting through the estimated 1031 viral particles on Earth seems like an almost impossible task, but it’s one which offers potentially enormous breakthroughs. Viruses can cause disease, pandemics, and affect the health of terrestrial and marine environments. The majority of them are still unknown or misunderstood. Now, researchers in Australia and the US have built […]

Reef pest feasts on ‘sea sawdust’ Australian Marine scientists have discovered crown-of-thorns (COTS) starfish larvae feast on blue-green algae bacteria, known as “sea sawdust” or Trichodesmium, according to new research in Science Advances. “With sea sawdust blooms on the rise in recent years, our findings suggest this could help explain the increase in COTS populations, […]

Two teams of scientists have announced they’ve made stretchy, jelly-like batteries. Flexible electronics, for things like health monitors, need flexible power sources. At the moment, this mostly means batteries made from tiny, rigid components. These batteries, which are made with very different methods, are both stretchy all the way down. They represent 2 possible paths […]

Cabin lighting inspired by the colours of the Australian landscape and grounded in circadian science will be on Qantas’ upcoming Project Sunrise ultra-long-haul flights to help minimise jet lag and improve customer wellbeing. The new, evidence-based lighting design on Qantas’s A350 aircraft could reduce passengers’ jetlag by aligning their body clocks to their destination’s time […]

In a 2019 video YouTube’s most popular personality, MrBeast, gave almost $US10,000 to a live streamer simply for playing RAID: Shadow Legends. It was not declared as advertising, but MrBeast was one of over 2000 “creators” to promote the video game as part of a marketing campaign by PR company HypeFactory.  RAID: Shadow Legends is […]

Australian engineers have built a speargun-inspired device that could cut the costs and time involved in planning offshore wind farms. The device launches a probe into the seabed, which can tell surveyors what the ground is like. Currently, surveying equipment for offshore wind farms involves inefficient, probes called penetrometers dropped or winched from a boat. […]

The Sun might be beginning to enter its next 11-year solar cycle halfway through its current one according to new research. Solar cycles are a measure of the activity of our solar system’s central star. The peak about halfway through a cycle is known as the solar maximum. We are currently in the solar maximum […]

An international group of medical researchers is calling for a better understanding of “spin” in research papers. They say that authors, peer reviewers and editors need to be able to recognise and fix misleading reporting in medical studies. The researchers, who have published a paper in Annals of Internal Medicine, also have guidance on how […]

Next time you are recovering from a wild storm, and feeling the need for a wonderful revitalising cup of tea, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t give you the warmth inside you were hoping for. The storm might have changed the way tea tastes. In November 2023, Storm Ciarán rolled across Europe, causing flooding and […]

Newly released data reveals that global carbon sinks in 2023 were at their weakest since 2003 according to a new pre-print paper available on the arXiv server. Carbon sinks are anything natural or artificial which absorbs more greenhouse gases than it releases. Examples of carbon sinks are plants, soil and the oceans. They are vital […]

Each year, humans burning fossil fuels emit about 10 billion tonnes of carbon, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2). But not all of this greenhouse gas ends up in our atmosphere, thanks to carbon sinks. Carbon sinks are natural systems that absorb more CO2 than they emit. The world’s forests absorb approximately 3.5 […]