Author: Editorial Board

A team of researchers has found what may once have been the most liveable mud on Mars. Some of the oldest minerals ever analysed by NASA’s Mars Opportunity Rover show that around four billion years ago Mars had liquid water so fresh it could have supported life. The findings were announced in a special ‘Exploring…

Education in Australia can be distinguished according to sources of funding and administrative structures. There are two broad categories of schools in Australia: public schools and private schools. But, what are the differences at the moment? How much do they cost today? The Australian Scholarships Group organised a survey that showed parents of a child…

It’s a New year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annual question to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2014 edition asks the question, “What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement?” The question came prefaced by this thought given as follows. Science advances by discovering new things and developing new…

The brilliance of nature’s genius has been proven once again. New research shows that the bird’s “V” formation is aerodynamic for real. In flight formation, each bird has an assigned position and each flap of the wing is precisely timed to conserve energy. What does this mean? The bird in front takes around 40 %…

Thousands of honey bees in Australia are being fitted with tiny sensors as part of a world-first research program to monitor the insects and their environment using a technique known as ‘swarm sensing’. The research is being led by CSIRO and aims to improve honey bee pollination and productivity on farms as well as help…

A cyborg future is coming. Man’s relationship with machine is merging. Machines are an extension of our own intelligence. Soon we all will wear some kinds of bio-sensors to tell us what is happening inside us. That’s the future. A cyborg or a cybernetic organism is a being with both biological and mechanical parts. Generally,…

Competitors in this year’s Rolex Sydney-Hobart race fleet may need to negotiate their way around three significant ocean eddies as they sail south this year, according to oceanographers. CSIRO’s Dr David Griffin has generated a view of the course based on observations from Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). The first, south-east of Jervis Bay,…

Discover black holes while you ride to work! Or hunt them down on your home computer. ‘Radio Galaxy Zoo’, launching today, is a new ‘citizen science’ project that lets anyone become a cosmic explorer. By matching galaxy images with radio images from CSIRO’s Australia Telescope, you can work out if a galaxy has a supermassive…

A new research theory claims that we could simply live in a projection of another cosmos. How is that possible? By holographic principle, gravity comes from thin, vibrating strings. These strings are holograms of events which exist in a flatter cosmos. According to this theory, everything we experience can be assumed as events occurring in…

Every creative writer was asked the question at least once at a social event with non-writers: “Where do you get your ideas?” To the wonderer, writing is a dark art, full of mysteries and secrets only the initiated understand. To the writer as Neil Gaiman the question misses the point and misjudges the writer’s task. …