Science

LST-1 prototype in La Palma, Spain. Tomohiro Inada/CTA , CC BY-NC-ND Long gone are the days when astronomers only studied the skies with simple optical telescopes. Today, unveiling the mysteries of the Universe involves ever-larger and more complex facili...

Nathan Stirk/Getty Images The latest synthesis report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) makes it clear we need to prepare for intensifying impacts, while also cutting emissions dramatically. One beacon of hope is the globa...

Shutterstock When I was growing up monsteras (sometimes known as monsteria) were not all that common, but neither were indoor plants. In fact, monsteras were out of fashion back then but now monsteras are back and, appropriately, in a big way. The plants ...

Luis Cristofori/Shutterstock Australia has an ambivalent relationship with dingoes to some they are almost magical representations of our arid landscapes, responsible for holding back a tide of foxes and feral cats , as found in some studies. To others th...

Elizabeth Campbell operating the Floyd Telescope, 1922 total solar eclipse. State Library Western Australia 4131B/3/8, enhanced detail , Author provided A total solar eclipse is a remarkable alignment of our Sun, Earth and the Moon, as the latter casts a ...

Mee Ko Dong/Shutterstock Australia has embarked on an experiment to create a market for biodiversity. No, we're not talking about buying and selling wildlife, although, sadly, there is a black market for that. This is about repairing and restoring lan...

Mike Corder / AP Last week, an Australian "cultured meat" company called Vow made headlines with a meatball made from the flesh of a woolly mammoth or something very much like it. Combining the technologies of lab-based cell culture and " de-e...

A diagram of a lunar eclipse from De Sphaera Mundi by Johannes de Sacrobosco, c. 1240 AD. New York Public Library Before humans started heating the planet by burning fossil fuels in the 19th century, Earth had experienced centuries-long widespread cool pe...

Old tensions emerged between green groups en route to the hard-fought Labor-Greens deal over the safeguard mechanism industrial emissions policy. At the height of negotiations, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) started lobbying the Greens to ac...

Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images Schools and universities are panicking about artificial intelligence (AI) and cheating. But AI presents far more significant threats to equity in education. Fears of cheating typically arise from conc...

Former President Donald Trump sits during his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 4, 2023. Andrew Kelly-Pool/Getty Images Former President Donald Trump was arraigned in New York on April 4, 2023. Shortly after, the charges that a Manhattan gr...

Easter has its bunnies, but chocolate comes out for every holiday. garytog/iStock via Getty Images Plus Tens of millions of chocolate bunnies get sold in the U.S. every Easter. Here are six articles about chocolate from The Conversation's archive grea...

Former U.S. President Donald Trump sits with his attorneys for his arraignment at the Manhattan criminal court on April 4, 2023, in New York City. Pool/ Getty Images News via Getty Images North America Much has been made of the unprecedented nature of the...

Misunderstanding can play a role in people's dislike of others who have different beliefs. wildpixel/Getty Images U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene drew raised eyebrows when she suggested on Presidents Day that the United States pursue a "national ...

Finnish military personnel raise their country's flag at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images In the world of geopolitics, great powers make, break and play by their own rules. Smaller states largely have to ma...

It takes around 17 years for medical research to translate into clinical practice. shapecharge/E+ via Getty Images Scientific knowledge, as measured by numbers of papers published, has been estimated to double every 17.3 years . However, it takes an avera...

Human evolution is typically depicted with a progressive whitening of the skin, despite a lack of evidence to support it. Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov/Wikimedia Commons Systemic racism and sexism have permeated civilization since the rise of agriculture,...

Your genes determine the look of your navel. Mike Kemp/Tetra images via Getty Images Everyone has one, but you might not know much about it. Here biologist Sarah Leupen , who teaches human and comparative animal physiology, explains the ins and outs of be...

Shutterstock Last week, artificial intelligence pioneers and experts urged major AI labs to immediately pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. An open letter penned by the Future of Life Institute cautioned that...

Yellowj/Shutterstock What if you could be fined or lose your license for driving tired? Our new study just published in Nature and Science of Sleep has found if you had less than five hours of sleep last night, you are just as likely to have a vehicle cra...

Caladan Oceanic , Author provided How deep can fish live in the ocean? That question has captivated me for more than a decade. But my research team's discovery of the deepest sea fish , announced this week, might not be the final answer. There may be ...

It was big news when a grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images The indictment of a former president of the United States, Donald Trump, is history happening in real time. The Conversation asked political sci...

Turkey's Adana Hospital survived February 2023 earthquakes with no damage because of its seismic isolation system. Earthquake Protection Systems, Inc. , CC BY-ND The Feb. 6, 2023, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria damaged over 100,000 buildings, caused ...

Dog-walking income is taxable. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images Do you rent out your home a few weekends a year through Airbnb? Sell stuff on Etsy? Get paid for pet-sitting? If you, like many Americans, make at least US$600 a year with a side hustle of any...

Establishing the financial worth of a river's fish is complicated when many people don't sell the fish they catch. Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images Southeast Asia's Mekong may be the most important river in the world. Known as the "mo...

The Uphams Corner Food Forest in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood was built on a vacant lot. Boston Food Forest Coalition , CC BY-ND More than half of all people on Earth live in cities, and that share could reach 70% by 2050 . But except for public p...

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, left, and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen announce their new trade agreement. Dan Kitwood/Pool/AFP via Getty Images A new trade agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, which left the EU ...

Mourners gather outside a detention center in Ciudad Juarez. David Peinado/picture alliance via Getty Images The fire-related deaths of at least 39 migrants in a detention facility in Ciudad Juarez, just across the U.S. border with Mexico, will likely be ...

A supporter of former President Donald Trump protests the indictment announcement near Mar-a-Lago, Fla., on March 31, 2023. Chandan Khan/AFP via Getty Images When former President Donald Trump turns himself over to authorities in New York on Tuesday, Apri...

Shutterstock What if we told you the world has forests harbouring creatures with three hearts and where the canopy can grow by a foot a day? What if we told you it was silently disappearing? What if we told you we now have the chance to bring it back? The...

Australia is about to take a big, constructive step on climate change policy: we will have a carbon price for the industry sector, under the safeguard mechanism. It comes nine years after the Abbott Coalition government abolished Labor's carbon price....

leandro fregoni/Unsplash Bees provide myriad benefits to humanity, including pollination services, honey production , food security and crop pollination, artistic inspiration and even career opportunities . But what if bees could also provide insights int...

Shutterstock Off the coast of Antarctica, trillions of tonnes of cold salty water sink to great depths. As the water sinks, it drives the deepest flows of the "overturning"; circulation a network of strong currents spanning the world's oceans. ...

Solheimajokull, a glacier in Southern Iceland. whatafoto/flickr , CC BY-NC Last week, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report , delivering a sobering assessment ...

Author provided It's well understood that the digital divide disproportionately affects people living in regional Australian communities. Remote Aboriginal communities in particular are among the most digitally excluded , yet there is little research ...

Gun control activists rally in Nashville, Tenn. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) The shooting deaths of three children and three adults inside a Nashville school has put further pressure on Congress to look at imposing a ban on so-called assault w...

How are people today related to those who lived centuries ago in the Swahili civilization? The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs/Flickr , CC BY-NC-ND The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Afric...

Thousands of banks failed in the Great Depression. Bettmann via Getty Images The failure of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, 2023, came as a shock to most Americans. Even people like myself, a scholar of the U.S. banking system who has worked at the Feder...

Blood carries oxygen and vital nutrients to the brain. Mr. Suphachai Praserdumrongchai/iStock via Getty Images Neuroscientists have long assumed that neurons are greedy, hungry units that demand more energy when they become more active, and the circulator...

Labor and the Greens on Monday announced a deal to strengthen a key climate policy, the safeguard mechanism, by introducing a hard cap on industrial sector emissions. But the Greens failed in their bid to force Labor to ban new coal and gas projects. Labo...

A member of Israel's military reserves takes part in a protest on March 16, 2023 in Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv. Photo by Eyal Warshavsky/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The judicial overhaul plan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Net...

Anom Harya/Shutterstock Shoot for the moon . Even if you miss, you'll land on the next tree. Many groups of mammals seem to have taken this evolutionary advice to heart. According to our newly published paper in Science Advances , unrelated animals ma...

The Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. memorial sculpture at Boston Common is called 'The Embrace.' Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images As an acclaimed photographer and conceptual artist, Hank Willis Thomas has grown accustomed to critic...

3D printers can lay down more than just layers of melted plastic. Dedraw Studio/iStock via Getty Images Plus A new 3D-printing technique using silicone can make accurate models of the blood vessels in your brain, enabling neurosurgeons to train with more ...

Magnetic levitation is just one of the interesting attributes that make superconductors so interesting. Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library vie Getty Images The modern world runs on electricity, and wires are what carry that electricity to every light, tel...

Baidu's ERNIE Bot was launched to considerable disappointment. Ng Han Guan / AP On March 16, Baidu unveiled China's latest rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT ERNIE Bot (short for "Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration"). The ...

Moana project , CC BY-ND The world's oceans are buffering us from the worst climate impacts by taking up more than 90% of the excess heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions. This has warmed them by 0.88 (on average globally), according to the lates...

Shutterstock Earlier this month, regulators flagged power price rises in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Like many people, you're probably wondering how you can minimise the financial pain. Getting rid of gas and electrifyin...

Warrumbungle national park. colinslack/Shutterstock Our new study published in Nature Geoscience on an ancient chain of Australian volcanoes is helping to change our understanding of "hotspot" volcanism. You may be surprised to learn eastern Austr...

Can public radio fill the hole left by the decline of local news outlets? Talaj/iStock / Getty Images Plus Since 2005, more than 2,500 local newspapers, most of them weeklies, have closed , with more closures on the way. Responses to the decline have rang...