COP28 president is wrong – science clearly shows fossil fuels must go (and fast)
Dec 05, 2023 05:40 am UTC| Science
According to the president of COP28, the latest round of UN climate negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, there is no science indicating that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to restrict global heating to...
Why isn't there any sound in space? An astronomer explains why in space no one can hear you scream
Dec 05, 2023 05:40 am UTC| Science
In space, no one can hear you scream. You may have heard this saying. Its the tagline from the famous 1979 science fiction movie Alien. Its a scary thought, but is it true? The simple answer is yes, no one can hear you...
Was going to space a good idea?
Dec 05, 2023 05:36 am UTC| Science
In 1963, six years after the first satellite was launched, editors from the Encyclopaedia Britannica posed a question to five eminent thinkers of the day: Has mans conquest of space increased or diminished his stature? The...
Dec 04, 2023 12:29 pm UTC| Science
If you listen to the dreamers, hydrogen is the magical fuel of the future that can replace everything from the petrol in your car to the coal in a steelworks. Hype around hydrogen has been building in Australia since at...
Massive planet too big for its own sun pushes astronomers to rethink exoplanet formation
Dec 01, 2023 08:15 am UTC| Science
Imagine youre a farmer searching for eggs in the chicken coop but instead of a chicken egg, you find an ostrich egg, much larger than anything a chicken could lay. Thats a little how our team of astronomers felt when...
Do we live in a giant void? It could solve the puzzle of the universe's expansion
Dec 01, 2023 02:58 am UTC| Science
One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is the rate at which the universe is expanding. This can be predicted using the standard model of cosmology, also known as Lambda-cold dark matter (ΛCDM). This model is...
Nov 30, 2023 00:45 am UTC| Science
The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and life less than a billion years after that. Although life as we know it is dependent on four major macromolecules DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids only one is thought to have been...
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
Economist Chris Richardson on an ‘ugly’ inflation result and the coming budget
Labour can afford to be far more ambitious with its economic policies – voters are on board
Sudan: civil war stretches into a second year with no end in sight