The new AlphaGo Zero artificial intelligence took just days to learn to play Go from scratch, with no human intervention. It even learned strategies never seen before in human play.
High grades might be awarded to papers that show the structural features of highly persuasive writing -- papers that follow the “persuasion script”, so to speak.
Ochre is more than just paint - it tells stories of culture and trade in Indigenous Australians. Using museum artefacts plus science can track ochre sources and untangle a lost history.
Cells are not stagnant: they are active, and responsive. Mechanobiology is the science of how cells and tissues sense and respond to mechanical forces, and is creating new therapies.
One way to cut your household bills could be to deal with just one company for all your utility needs. With today's technology, it's an idea that's not so far fetched as it sounds.
Astronomers have finally confirmed the source of the latest detected gravitational waves was the collission of a pair of neutron stars, what they'd been searching for all along.
The discovery of tiny ripples in space from the violent collision of dense stars could help solve many mysteries – including where the gold in our jewellery comes from.
The gravitational wave itself is the least exciting part of the announcement from LIGO and Virgo. Observing this new source answers many longstanding questions.
Racism thrives online because of a clash between the commercial goals and ethical responsibilities of social media companies. But Australia can take legal and civil actions right now to address this.
Bates Gill, Macquarie University and Adam Ni, Australian National University
The upcoming Chinese Communist Party's 19th National Congress will see one of the biggest turnovers of China’s military elite since the founding of the country.
The 2017 Prime Minister's Science Prize winner is genetic researcher Professor Jenny Graves, well known for her 2002 suggestion that the male Y chromosome will self-destruct.
The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to scientists who helped pioneer the discovery of gravitational waves. Australia is playing an important role in gravitational-wave astronomy.
The Cassini space probe took us up close and through the beautiful rings of Saturn. It captured some amazing images, and even the sound of the rings during its mission.
With only days to go before NASA's Cassini space probe ends its two-decade mission to explore Saturn, what has it revealed about the ringed planet, the second largest in our solar system?
Tough action is promised against companies that offer faster internet speeds than they can deliver over the NBN. But it's up to consumers to monitor and report on any speed issues.
Both Voyager spacecraft are only in communication with Earth via a Canberra tracking station.
NASA/JPL
The Voyager space probes sent back some amazing images of the planets in the outer Solar System, and they're still talking to Earth every day via Australia's tracking station.
Canberra has asked for a national postal vote on marriage reform - could a sample survey be a better option?
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Australians will be asked to complete a voluntary, non-binding postal vote on marriage reform. Wouldn't it be easier - and cheaper - to do a sample survey instead?
The rise of the ChiefBot.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
Australia's Chief Scientist Alan Finkel says while it’s possible to build robots to take over jobs – including his own – humanity still has the edge over machines.
A 3,700-year old Babylonian clay tablet reveals an ancient method of constructing right-angled triangles that makes it the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table.
The new map was created using data from rocks found in locations including Madagascar.
Alan Collins
You would not recognise Earth if you saw it 500 million years ago - the lands, oceans, climate and life were all very different. Scientists now have a new map of the deep history of Earth.
Crystals are renowned for being hard and brittle.
from www.shutterstock.com
It's a crystal - but not as you've seen it before. A new crystal can be bent and flexed, and is expected to deliver new responsive materials for emerging technologies.
Boeing WC-135 Constant Phoenix “sniffer plane” used to monitor radioactive emissions from nuclear bomb tests.
US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Christopher Boitz
Doxing challenges traditional journalism. Its investigative role is circumvented by people disclosing information online quickly, and often inaccurately.
More than 50% of Australians think drugs should be cleared for use before they’ve completed clinical trials.
Neale Cousland/shutterstock
Most Australians value science. But we do have some hesitations about the pace of scientific advances, and we're not sure if scientists are prestigious or not.
A simulation of the latest binary black hole merger detected by LIGO. Blue indicates weak fields and yellow indicates strong fields.
Numerical-relativistic Simulation: S Ossokine, A Buonanno (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) and the Simulating eXtreme Spacetime project Scientific Visualization: T Dietrich (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics), R Haas (NCSA)
Scientists have made a third detection of gravitational waves, again caused by the merger of two black holes. But they think there's something different about the black holes in this case.
Scientists use satellite sensing to find the Earth’s centre of mass.
NASA
Rays caught unintentionally by fishing trawlers often spend time on deck before being returned to the ocean. New research shows the stress of this experience affects pregnant rays, and their babies.
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