Blog

The Australian National University recently renovated their fusion reactor. This magnetic marvel harnesses immense pressures and temperatures to replicate the reactions that power our Sun. And there’s a lot of maths that helps to keep the reactions going! A fusion donut Fusion reactors use hydrogen as fuel. Under intense heat and pressure, the electrons leave […]

Written by Beth Askham Emotions can run high in the twitterverse. Tweets about feelings can now be mapped to find the mood of a city, nation or area. An online tool called We Feel, developed by CSIRO researchers, scans up to 32 000 tweets per minute. It recognises a range of words to judge how […]

Written by Sarah Kellett Can we power our homes with the process that powers stars? Nuclear fusion offers to do just that, and scientists are looking for ways to harness this energy with experiments that run hotter than the Sun.

Written by Sarah Kellett Wheat is Australia’s main winter crop. Sown in autumn and harvested in spring or summer, it provides us with flour to make our daily bread. We eat wheat as toast with vegemite, or sandwiches for lunch. But wheat is not for everyone

Written by Sarah Kellett 3D printers can create toys, bicycle parts and models of dinosaur bones. Bioprinters are 3D printers with a difference. They can actually print structures containing living cells, the same kind of cells that make up the human body!

Written by Sarah Kellett Researchers have made a cheap and rapid new test to diagnose type 1 diabetes using a gold-studded glass chip.

Written by Sarah Kellett It’s National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week. What better time to celebrate a shared research project between the Wajarri people and the University of Western Australia! Australia’s largest Aboriginal ochre mine is Wilgie Mia, in Wajarri Yamatji country far north of Perth. It is an incredibly important cultural […]

Written by Sarah Kellett In the warm tropical ocean around the Great Barrier Reef, the lionfish hunts. Venomous fins fan out to trap a school of smaller fish. The little fish look for an escape. But this lionfish is not hunting alone.

Written by Sarah Kellett On Saturn’s largest moon, the hills are named after hobbits and elves, and the lakes after lakes on Earth. Titan is, in many ways, the most Earth-like world we’ve ever found.

Written by Sarah Kellett Humans produce a lot of waste, from flushing toilets to mining metals, like the copper in electrical wires that power computers, phones and tablets. To clean up our act, a new way to purify contaminated wastewater from mines has been developed by CSIRO scientists.