News
all News articles
-
Signs of change from a turbulent era
Drill core reveals boom-bust landscape in Africa’s Rift Valley.
A new drill core, preserving a million years of environmental history in the East African Rift Valley, is helping unt...
-
Wind? That’s barely a breeze
Lily shows how to handle gusty conditions.
Birds can fly easily in winds that would challenge engineered air vehicles of a similar size, and now Lily the Britis...
-
Diabolical design is a puzzle
Scientists discover secret of a near-indestructible beetle.
It’s not uncommon for scientists to take cues from nature when it comes to self-protection. In recent months, Cosmos ...
What happens when you hit an asteroid
OSIRIS-REx shows how to collect samples at a distance.
NASA has just released this short video of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s brief but all important contact with the aster...
Aussie Backyard Bird Count takes flight
Join in on one of Australia’s largest citizen science events.
In celebration of National Bird Week, Australia’s largest annual citizen science event has kicked off, running until ...
Features
all Features articles
-
Focus
Cosmos Q&A: A forgotten foe returns
Scarlet fever is back on the research radar.
Scarlet fever was a feared disease until well into the 20th century. Characterised by a red, sandpapery rash, it typi...
-
Conversation
How AI can affect our choices and decisions
We seem more comfortable telling all to robots.
By TaeWoo Kim, University of Technology Sydney Have you ever used Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Amazon Alexa t...
-
Citizen Science
Your at-home guide to appreciating snails
Watch what they do, then tell their stories.
Ah, the humble snail. They’re slow, slimy and a have a lousy habitat of devouring our hard-grown veggies. However, li...
Space
all Space articles
-
Snapshot
What happens when you hit an asteroid
OSIRIS-REx shows how to collect samples at a distance.
NASA has just released this short video of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s brief but all important contact with the aster...
-
Cheers as spacecraft tags asteroid
OSIRIS-REx touches down for a sample of Bennu.
In a brief moment that its principal scientist Dante Lauretta described as “transcendental”, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacec...
-
Poised and ready for a date with Bennu
OSIRIS-REx has hopes, dreams and contingency plans.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is poised to make a daring landing on asteroid 101955 Bennu, briefly touching down in a tin...
Technology
all Technology articles
-
Looking at perovskite in a new light
Australian team tackles a stability problem.
Australian researchers may have overcome a significant hurdle in the global quest to develop next-generation perovski...
-
Conversation
How AI can affect our choices and decisions
We seem more comfortable telling all to robots.
By TaeWoo Kim, University of Technology Sydney Have you ever used Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Amazon Alexa t...
-
Nature
all Nature articles
-
Signs of change from a turbulent era
Drill core reveals boom-bust landscape in Africa’s Rift Valley.
A new drill core, preserving a million years of environmental history in the East African Rift Valley, is helping unt...
-
Wind? That’s barely a breeze
Lily shows how to handle gusty conditions.
Birds can fly easily in winds that would challenge engineered air vehicles of a similar size, and now Lily the Britis...
-
Diabolical design is a puzzle
Scientists discover secret of a near-indestructible beetle.
It’s not uncommon for scientists to take cues from nature when it comes to self-protection. In recent months, Cosmos ...
Earth
all Earth articles
-
Rain really can move mountains
Himalayan study describes dramatic impact of erosion.
Plate tectonics tends to dominate the common view of mountain formation: where two plates meet, rock is pushed up. Ho...
-
Report
Cosmos Q&A: Putting biodiversity in focus
Scientists call for new agency to drive reform.
The Australian Academy of Sciences (AAS) has called for an independent agency to be established to drive reform of bi...
-
Restore ecosystems to prevent extinctions
Targeting priority areas also could mitigate CO2 emissions.
Restoring just under a third of Earth’s ecosystems to their natural state could protect more than two-thirds of land-...
History
all History articles
-
Plague spread quickly in Medieval Europe
Documents reveal an increasing transmission rate.
The speed of plague transmission in London increased four-fold between the Black Death of 1348 and the Great Plague o...
-
Let the Eurasian games begin
Ball sports were played much earlier than thought.
This area of northwest China may have been the venue for Eurasia’s oldest ball games. A team of Swiss, German and ...
-
A tale of two cesspits
Why ancient intestinal health is important now.
Scientists have reported what they say is the first attempt to use the methods of ancient bacterial detection, pionee...
People
all People articles
-
Citizen Science
Aussie Backyard Bird Count takes flight
Join in on one of Australia’s largest citizen science events.
In celebration of National Bird Week, Australia’s largest annual citizen science event has kicked off, running until ...
-
Are women more moral than men?
They’re certainly fairer and more caring, study suggests.
Women score consistently more highly than men on moral dimensions of caring, fairness and purity, according to a comp...
-
Health
all Health articles
-
Focus
Cosmos Q&A: A forgotten foe returns
Scarlet fever is back on the research radar.
Scarlet fever was a feared disease until well into the 20th century. Characterised by a red, sandpapery rash, it typi...
-
The gene that tells us it’s time to pee
Research finds PIEZO2 has an important ‘sixth sense’.
US researchers say they have discovered that a gene with a “sixth sense” may be responsible for the powerful urge to ...
-
It shouldn’t be just about happy endings
Human bias can skew our memory and our choices.
A human bias towards happy endings can skew our memory of an experience and the likelihood of choosing it again. T...
Core Sciences
all Core Sciences articles
-
It happened in just a few zeptoseconds
Physicists measure the shortest unit of time.
German physicists say they have measured the shortest unit of time ever – a mere 247 zeptoseconds. Schematic rep...
-
Healthy bacteria thrive in gut before birth
Microbiota help healthy foetuses grow.
Micro-organisms in the gut microbiome begin growing in foetuses as early as five months, new research shows. In a ...
-
Honey goes with the flow
Clever coatings reverse the rules of viscosity.
Water flows more quickly than honey – except, perhaps, when it doesn’t. Physicists in Finland were surprised to fi...