Author: Sharon
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Weekly Science Picks
It’s Sunday again. Time for some science-y goodness from around the globe!! Mouse eats scorpion, feels no pain. The discovery that a type of mouse feels no pain from scorpion venom has revealed a new strategy for developing pain-killing drugs. Hubble to get boost from gravitational lensing Astronomers are attempting to boost the imaging prowess…
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Science Weekly: dinosaurs, global time bomb, shy birds, proof of alien life
Welcome to Science Weekly!! It’s been a busy week so we’ve got some great picks for you today. What’s that smell? Most of us know we have 5 taste receptors… but did you know we can smell ten different ‘categories’ of odours? Dino model shows the glide path to flight Scientists using a wind tunnel…
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Weekly Science Picks
It’s that time of the week again. Time for some science-y goodness from around the globe!! NASA Spitzer Telescope celebrates 10 years in space! Ten years ago the Spitzer Space Telescope was launched about a Delta II rocket from Canaveral, Florida. Spitzer is an infrared telescope and is the fourth of the NASA’s four Great…
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Women in Space: Judith Resnik
This article is one of a series of articles in which I will profile every woman astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut who has been into space. Last time we looked at the career of Sally Ride. Today I’m profiling astronaut Judith Resnik. (The feature image above is a collection of drawings of women astronauts by artist…
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National Science Week: Memes, blogs and videos: how social media has transformed the way we communicate science
On Friday night I was lucky enough to be able to attend National Science Week’s Event ‘Memes, blogs and videos: how social media has transformed the way we communicate science‘ in Canberra. The event was a panel discussion between some of the most prominent and influential social media science communicators around the globe. The panel…
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Weekly Science Picks
It’s that time of the week again. Time for some science-y goodness from around the globe!! Mystery of the Van Allen Radiation belts solved! We’ve known for some time that electrons in the heart of the Van Allen Radiation Belts are accelerated to almost the speed of light. But until now we didn’t know why…..…
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Weekly Science Picks
A happy Science Sunday to everyone! As usual there’s been a lot happening in the world of science, so lets take a peek of the most interesting picks for the past week! Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) to launch! At the end of this month, NASA will launch IRIS. IRIS will watch the Sun and…
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Weekly Science Picks
A happy Science Sunday to everyone! As usual there’s been a lot happening in the world of science, so lets take a peek of the best picks for the past week! Conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury! If you’re into astronomy, a planetary conjunction is something to celebrate! This week is one for the observers. …
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Women in Space: Sally Ride
This article is the third in a series of articles in which I will profile every woman astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut who has been into space. Last time we looked at the career of Svetlana Savitskaya the second woman in space. Today I’m profiling astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. (The feature…
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Lake Vostok and the search for extraterrestrial life
When Russian geographer and Antarctic explorer Andrey Kapitsa travelled to Vostok Station in 1959 he was looking for evidence of a subglacial lake that was first proposed by Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin at the end of the 19th century. Whilst Kropotkin was not able to specify the location of subglacial lakes, he theorised that masses…
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Weekly Science Picks
Science Sunday! Our recurring collection of some of the week’s blogs and science articles that you may have missed. What a week! So much science! Let’s start with mosquitoes…. The beat the mosquito’s heart didn’t miss… Frankly I’ve not given much thought to the heartbeat of mosquitoes. I’m usually much more worried that mine will…
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Svetlana Savitskaya – Test Pilot and Cosmonaut!
This article is the second in a series of articles in which I will profile every woman astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut who has been into space. Last time we looked at the career of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Today I’m profiling cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, the second woman in space. (The feature image…
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Women in Space – Valentina Tereshkova
This article is the first in a series of articles in which I will profile every woman astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut who has been into space. The last time I checked 58 women have travelled into space, by the end of this year there may be a few more! We’re going to start this series…
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The Search for Exoplanets
It seems like another day goes by and there’s another discovery of more exoplanets! On January 7, just one week into 2013, astronomers from the Kepler Mission Space Observatory announced the discovery of the latest exoplanet, the creatively named KOI-172.02. At this stage it appears that KOI-172.02 is an Earth-like planet candidate orbiting a star similar to our…