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Australia fire map

Bushfires: Spot by satellite, warn by phone

Combining satellite data with mobile phones offers a cheap and effective tool for managing fires.


Rafflesia

New hope for world's weirdest flower

Deep in the Southeast Asian jungle blooms the world's biggest single flower; a massive fleshy orb which has evolved to attract insects by mimicking rotting meat.


World Wide Web

Happy 40th birthday, Internet!

In 1969 a UCLA team sent the first message over ARPANET, the computer network that later became known as the Internet. Since then it has fundamentally changed humanity.


Orangutan

Orangutans struggle as palm oil booms

Wildlife corridors are desperately needed to link up hundreds of patches of habitat increasingly fragmented by palm oil plantations.


Orangutan

Oil or orangutans?

Illegal logging and palm oil plantations are destroying the forests of Borneo and Sumatra. We all have a part to play in resolving this, says Louise Boronyak.


Bullet train

Why high-speed trains are vital for Australia

A zero-emissions, high-speed train network linking Australian cities, would be visionary, nation building and go a long way to stemming our greenhouse gas emissions.


Red Sun

Enough climate science, now for the politics

Science can prove global climate change is happening, but it won't tell us what to do about it, says professor of climate change, Mike Hulme.


Meat lover

The red meat footprint

Our diets revolve around meat. But rumours abound that being vegetarian is better for the environment. Could there be some truth to it? We investigate the evidence.


Gliese 581d

It's a wrap for Hello From Earth

25,880 messages were collected by the project from places as far flung as the Vatican City, Afghanistan and Antarctica. NASA beamed them towards Gliese 581d at noon today.


Stone Age cartoon

Stone Age instincts, modern emergency

Could it be that our genes and evolutionary heritage are responsible for our failure to tackle climate change?


Observation

Wake-up call for science

Is science inherently illogical, because it relies in part on assumed theories that reach beyond what we can ever observe?


Earthrise

Apollo led to cosmic shift in human condition

One of the many legacies of the Apollo program was the way it caused an extraordinary, enduring – and, for some, troubling – change in how we perceived the universe and our place in it.


Saturn V rocket

Space Week: Did 1969 mark the end of the dream?

If visions conjured by the first lunar landing were to be believed, by the 21st century we would be colonising the Moon, honeymooning on Mars and scouting the moons of Jupiter.


Astronaut collecting rocks on the Moon

Space Week: Why the Moon rocks

What we’ve learned from the Moon landings over the past 40 years has given scientists good reasons to return to our nearest heavenly body.