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Imagine you have a massive pile of rocks. You think there might be gold in the rocks, not much, but enough to make some money. Now it might be easier to find out how much hidden gold there is.

Welcome to Double Helix magazine’s Q&A section – Microscope. We take a close look at small questions full of big ideas. Q: I want to know which is hotter, fire or lava? Or are they both the same?

Australia’s most powerful supercomputer – Raijin – has been officially launched. Imagine arming the population of Earth with calculators and setting them to work for 20 years. Raijin is so fast it could complete the same number of calculations in one hour!

The idea there are living organisms, as yet undiscovered by humans, living on other planets, has fascinated people for years. The search for alien life is not just a science fiction topic – it’s part of a scientific field called astrobiology.

Giant wombats, short-faced kangaroos and the largest land lizard to ever have lived are just some of Australia’s megafauna. These large animals have mostly gone extinct. However, the cause of their extinction is still a matter of debate.

A fridge or freezer can preserve food for weeks, months or years. But that’s nothing compared to glaciers, with layers of ice preserving information about Earth’s climate for thousands of years.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the power of the ocean. The thunderous crash of waves during a storm and more gentle movements of the tides have captured many people’s imaginations. But the power of the ocean is not just poetic – it could literally be used to provide electricity.

Wherever you are in the world, you may have noticed a change in the weather. Over the course of a year, there are periodic changes in things like temperature, rainfall and the amount of daylight. These changes allow us to divide the year into seasons.

Written by Deb Hodgkin Looking for a fun and colourful science activity to do? Try making these egg geodes!

Diamonds hold a special place in our imagination: they’re valuable, extremely hard, and sometimes just really pretty. Chemically speaking, diamonds are simple – they’re carbon. Carbon is an important element. All living things are made of compounds that contain carbon. One property of carbon is its ability to form allotropes. Allotropes contain the same element, […]