You might have seen this week that there’s a campaign regarding the future of the internet. Its chief proponents? NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee, journalist Glenn…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Science + Tech – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 5001 - 5025 of 6586 articles
China has released several satellite images its officials say could be wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people onboard. If they are proved to be true it shows how remote…
It’s been said that in a city, you’re never more than two metres away from a rat. But it seems more likely that you’re never more than two metres from someone playing the puzzle game Candy Crush Saga…
The longer it takes, the harder it gets to find the lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Spotting small objects floating on the surface of the water is a tough task after any air crash. But the more any…
In a war – declared or otherwise – bravery and perseverance are not enough. Communications are important. Effectiveness means being able to command your troops and gather information. It also means being…
Smartphones can already understand your voice commands but imagine if they tried to read your emotions as well. What if you asked it for details of movies showing at your local cinema and it replied: Well…
The missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has some similarities to the disappearance of Pan Am flight 944, which disappeared into the Pacific Ocean almost 50 years ago. Late in the afternoon of November…
AUSTRALIA 2025: How will science address the challenges of the future? In collaboration with Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb, we’re asking how each science discipline will contribute to Australia…
Antarctica was once covered in lush, subtropical forests, inhabited by diverse plants and animals including large dinosaurs. That’s going back many millions of years. These days, Antarctica is 99.7% covered…
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – with 239 people on board – is unusual in that two days after the plane lost communication there is no reliable evidence of debris. No radio calls were…
For Malaysia Airlines, every hour counts as it deals with the loss of flight MH370 with 227 passengers and 12 crew on-board. The first 48 hours of a crisis are the most critical for an organisation as…
A challenge for university researchers is to make the best use of any funding on their projects and anything that can save money should be welcomed. University representatives are already asking the federal…
Think of your favourite piece of music. Do you get shivers when the music swells or the chorus kicks in? Or are the opening few bars enough to make you feel tingly? Despite having no obvious survival value…
Australia is world famous for its venomous critters, including its many highly venomous snakes. The snake that holds the popular title of “world’s most venomous” is the inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus…
Have you ever been snorkelling or scuba diving on a windy day when there are lots of waves? Did you notice how much that flow of water against your body affected your ability to swim and control your movements…
One of great challenges of the 21st century has been to develop ways to manipulate matter on smaller and smaller dimensions. As the great physicist Richard Feynman noted in his famous 1959 lecture, “There’s…
Evidence of the first people to settle in Australia can be found in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, in western New South Wales, informally referred to as Australia’s Rift Valley. Hundreds of archaeological…
It’s been a while since Fred Astaire played a CSIRO scientist in the 1959 movie of Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach. Still one premise of the film holds true: you can’t always predict where your research…
High-tech robots called PackBots will be unleashed during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil to help boost security and examine suspicious objects. The Brazilian government purportedly spent US$7.2 million…
When disaster strikes – such as January’s bushfire in Victoria or the recent cold spell that froze much of north America – it’s vital for emergency services to get the latest information. They need to…
Metadata related to lawful interception has been in the news a bit lately. You may have seen last week the Australian Federal Police (AFP) called for more access to electronic metadata as a Senate committee…
Imagine this: you’re surfing the web while out at lunch. You decide to buy concert tickets, so to save having to put your sandwich down you ask a passer-by to log in to the ticketing website for you. As…
A black hole with extremely powerful jets has been found in the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83) by a team of Australian and American researchers, as we report in the journal Science today. Black holes are…
While the world’s largest circular particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – will continue operation for the next few years, scientists have already started the conversation to build a much…
Close your eyes and picture a scientist. What do you see? Perhaps an Albert Einstein, staring intently at a blackboard covered in incomprehensible equations, or of Alexander Fleming, hunched over the laboratory…