Science

A space company in the regional NSW town of Yass has partnered with the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra to develop and trial a strong, lightweight and heat-resistant material they hope will eventually be used to build rockets and spacecraft. Cingulan Space and ANU's Training Centre for Automated Manufacture of Advanced Composites (AMAC) recently completed a research project using a...

Getting up close and personal with a shark may be the stuff of nightmares for most of us, but university researchers are hoping NSW South Coast residents will share details of their encounters in a bid to better understand the full gamut of human-shark relations. While sharks are a magnet for public interest and media coverage, that's usually dominated by encounters...

It's commonly known as the 'seven minutes of terror' when entering the atmosphere of Mars, but the team at CSIRO's Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex will have a further frightful four minutes before they know if NASA's Perseverance rover makes its much-anticipated landing on Mars this Friday at 7:55 am. It takes 11 minutes and 22 seconds for communication from the rover...

A year since CSIRO opened an $11.5 million facility in Boorowa, in the NSW Hilltops Region, researchers are gaining ground with an original trial that aims to help farmers predict crop yields. This is the first project in Australia to use consumer-grade cameras to measure the height of a plant and the amount of grain in a spike to give...

When we returned to our bushfire-ravaged rural home at Malua Bay, on the NSW South Coast, on New Year's Day, the last thing we expected to find were tiny green survivors in the blackened ruins of our garden. The only patch of colour was an old rhubarb plant, and tucked right at the base of its shrivelled leaves were tiny...

Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) are designing and building a new infrared telescope that will soon be able to study cosmic events such as a star being born and the formation of new galaxies as they occur. The telescope, called DREAMS (the Dynamic REd All-sky Monitoring Survey) will be located at the historic Siding Spring Observatory in northern NSW and will monitor the...

There has been a close encounter of the space junk kind as two large satellites have caused a potentially dangerous collision that has been watched by scientists around the world, as well as a researcher from the Australian National University. Leading space expert and researcher at the ANU School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Dr Brad Tucker, said the two pieces of old space...

Conservation groups are outraged at the relaxation of rules within the protected waters of the Batemans Marine Park. Member for Bega, Andrew Constance and NSW Agriculture Minister, Adam Marshall last week announced that five sites had been identified for increased access prior to the summer school holidays – Brou Lake (South), Clarks Bay (Freshwater Bay), Forsters Bay, Montague Island (East and...

Those who grew up lucky enough to have the beach at their back door will be familiar with the annual migration of Mutton Birds. As a kid, I remember my local beach being blanketed in their grey feathered bodies; washed ashore dead with the tide. Fears of pollution in the water were soon put to one side once people realised...

With the implications of climate change growing louder in community consciousness, one group has been concentrating on land, soil and food production in innovative ways. ‘Land to Market Australia’ (L2MA), based on the NSW Southern Tablelands, has been named Grand Champion of the 2019 NSW Landcare Awards for the Australian Government Innovation in Agriculture Award. The 2019 Landcare Awards, presented...

While living in my husband's homeland in Montana, USA, I became aware of the concept of 'preppers,' people who think that the world will end imminently and are getting prepared by moving to a remote area, learning survival skills like hunting and stockpiling goods they think will be useful at the end of the world. Yesterday, after seeing emergency preparedness checklists...

A rare seahorse found in NSW coastal waters has been given additional protection with the state's Fisheries Scientific Committee (FSC) deciding to list the species as endangered. Following a review of the nomination and a public consultation period, the FSC, an independent committee of seven scientists, determined White’s Seahorse is at high risk of extinction in the near future. Named...

You are invited to join local naturalists and visiting entomologists and ecologists on a search for butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers and bugs along the foreshore of Lake Curalo in Eden this Sunday. Bega Valley Shire Council is partnering with Atlas of Life to host an Insect Ramble! Council’s Natural Assets Officer, Jessica O’Brien, believes the event is a golden opportunity to...