It would be nice to blast dangerous nuclear waste far away from Earth, or into the Sun where it won’t cause any harm. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds.
NASA
At the end of the day, the problem is that no-one on Earth wants nuclear waste stored near them, and it’s not safe or cost-effective to blast it into space.
This year saw the launch of the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on our Curious Kids articles.
The Conversation/ABC
Whatever your age, whatever your favourite topic – space, animals, nature, physics, how bodies work – we’ve got a Curious Kids article for you.
Earthrise: astronauts aboard Apollo 8 captured this spectacular photo of Earth rising above the lunar horizon as they emerged from behind the dark side of the Moon.
Image Credit: NASA
A bright comet visible in December provides an excellent viewing opportunity for night sky lovers – even potentially with the naked eye.
Smiles from Prime Minister Scott Morrison and SA Premier Steven Marshall as the location of Australia’s Space Agency is revealed to be Adelaide, South Australia.
Sam Wundke/AAP
The headquarters of the Australian Space Agency will be in Adelaide. So how did we get to this point? Here are ten essential reads to fill you in.
The South Pole Telescope and BICEP telescopes (pictured above) may discover clues that could teach us if there was something else ‘before’ the Big Bang.
Dr. Keith Vanderlinde/NSF
There are probably more than a million planets in the universe for every single grain of sand on Earth. That’s a lot of planets. My guess is that there probably is life elsewhere in the Universe.
The good thing about space is that – even though it has lots of dangerous stuff floating in it, and lots of exploding stars – it’s so big and empty that it almost doesn’t matter.
NASA/CXC/U.Texas
Brad Carter, University of Southern Queensland e Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland
There are lots of places where it’s much, much hotter than the Sun. And the amazing thing is that this heat also makes new atoms - tiny particles that have made their way long ago from stars to us.
Imagine This is a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on The Conversation’s Curious Kids article series. Season two has launched!
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation e Molly Glassey, The Conversation
These school holidays, check out the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation. And comb through our Curious Kids series.
Andrew Pontzen, Fabio Governato/Wikimedia Commons.
Our brain cells do look a lot like a map of the universe – but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.
Nervous about how southern television viewers would react, NBC executives closely monitored the filming of the kiss between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.
U.S. Air Force
The career arc of Nichelle Nichols – the first black woman to have a continuing co-starring role on TV – shows how diverse casting can have as much of an impact off the screen as it does on it.
Anish Kapoor made “Cloud Gate”, a giant bean-shaped mirror in Chicago. Visitors play with the light in the city and its surroundings, where our future lays.
The other galaxies are there, but they are hiding a very long way away.
www.shutterstock.com
We are in the Milky Way. If you travelled on an extremely fast spaceship for more than two million years, you would reach our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. All other galaxies are even further away.
Space mining has the potential to provide a greater supply of resources either for being exploited locally for construction or being sent back to earth.
A US Delta IV rocket lifts off.
United Launch Alliance/AFSPC