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Displaying 6251 - 6275 of 6575 articles
The brand new launch system announced by NASA last week has received wide mainstream media coverage – and why wouldn’t it? It is a plan for a giant rocket, after all. The proposed Space Launch System (SLS…
The information revolution is hurtling towards Antarctica in the shape of a 20 centimetre cube weighing less than 10 kilograms. It can’t come soon enough. Not because Antarctic scientists (numbering more…
So it’s finally here: Google Wallet, a free Android app that turns your (Google) smartphone into a mobile payment system, launched today. To do this, the company has partnered with Citi, MasterCard, First…
How worried should we be about cyber warfare? The latest amendment to the ANZUS treaty between the US and Australia, announced at the end of last week suggests it’s a genuine threat to the national security…
On Saturday, hundreds of protestors congregated in the Wall Street area of New York at the start of a protest dubbed #OccupyWallStreet. The aim? To “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens…
We have been fascinated and repelled by fire for millennia. It’s the defining feature of humanity and it has powered all cultures. But our relationship with this fundamental element, whether wild or contained…
A stroll down the personal growth aisle of the bookstore tells us, among other things, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps. The answer, as authors Alan and Barbara Pease delightedly inform their…
Children and teenagers today do all the things that children and teenagers have more or less always done – they talk to their friends, have dinner with the family, and watch TV. However, as even the casual…
It’s one of the most famous and evocative images in cinematic history – Luke Skywalker gazing out at the twin suns of Tatooine as they set, in the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope. Such a view would…
During a lunch in the summer of 1950, physicists Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and Herbert York were chatting about a recent New Yorker cartoon depicting aliens abducting trash cans in flying saucers. Suddenly…
A recent announcement by the research director of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) indicated the Higgs boson – often referred to as the “God particle” – has been excluded at 95% confidence…
This week, the American National Labour Review Board ruled to reinstate five workers fired for complaining about a co-worker on Facebook. The board decided writing about work on Facebook was equivalent…
This month’s launch of the .xxx internet domain, a new section of the internet dedicated to pornography and erotica, is getting people hot and bothered. The global body coordinating internet addresses…
Detecting gravity waves is a major goal for astrophysicists. We know they should be there, but we haven’t found them yet. But today we are one step closer. By literally squeezing light on a quantum level…
Recently my colleagues and I announced the discovery of a remarkable planet orbiting a special kind of star known as a pulsar. Based on the planet’s density, and the likely history of its system, we concluded…
Two recent hacking incidents have highlighted the increasing fragility of the internet’s core infrastructure. They serve as a stark reminder that online security is somewhat illusory. The weaknesses have…
Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people working in the same field. Here Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney…
In the euphoria following the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, the so-called “hero” of the revolution proclaimed: “Technology played a great role here. You know, it helped keeping…
Since its discovery in August 2008, the site of Malapa in Johannesburg has yielded more than 220 bones of early hominins representing at least six individuals, including the remains of babies, juveniles…
You might have heard about athletes and other sportspeople absconding to high-altitude locations for training. Indeed altitude training has become the training-method-du-jour for sporting codes around…
The world of weather forecasting is still dominated by government agencies and national weather services, but there’s now a steady drip-drip of private forecasters. While they’re not exactly flooding the…
Eyeless fish that have evolved underground, completely isolated from the day-night cycle, may offer clues to how our body clocks work up here on dry land. Authors of a report published today in the online…
Scientists hoping to fix a deadly cancer killing Tasmanian Devils and researchers behind a new needle-free immunisation technique were among the scores of Australian researchers celebrated at the Oscars…
A recent series of articles on The Conversation focused on the value of forensic science in criminal cases. Many specialities were covered. But what about forensic psychology? Professionals in this field…