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SPECIAL REPORT
THE FUTURE OF ENERGY
It's the biggest issue facing our society, our economy and even human civilisation in the 21st century: our galloping demand for more energy... and urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this 19-page special report, COSMOS looks at two sides of the problem: the oil we need to keep our vehicles and industry running, and where we get our electricity. |
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NEW AGE NUCLEAR
Nuclear power produces almost no greenhouse gases, but it has many drawbacks. Now a radical new technology based on thorium promises what uranium never delivered: abundant, safe and clean energy. Tim Dean explores the possibilities.
GOODBYE CHEAP OIL
Global demand for oil will one day overtake our ability to produce it cheaply, and prices will skyrocket as half the world's easily extractable oil is gone. But when? Jim Motavalli tells us a growing number think soon - if it hasn't already happened.
PREDATOR
It was the most ferocious meat-eating marsupial of all time, but as Carmelo Amalfi explains, it remained a mystery to science - until a treasure trove of fossils was discovered, and a window to the past was opened.
WEB OF DECEIT
Had it not been for a group of young scientists and a determined television show, we might never have known that stem cell pioneer Hwang Woo-suk was a fake. Elizabeth Finkel traces the saga.
FREEZING POINT
Clues to a sudden, unexplained climatic shift 5,200 years ago are being unmasked by the retreat of the world's tropical glaciers. John Fleischman asks whether it could be a warning.
HIS BRILLIANT CAREER
Shaking up the British establishment is just the sort of thing Robert May was cut out for. Robin McKie meets the personable, blunt, jocular and eminent Australian scientist who's made British science a lot more interesting.
Peter Doherty describes how he was pushed from comfortable obscurity to national prominence. Nothing quite prepared him for winning a Nobel Prize.
Explosive experiments involving Scalextric sets, 12-volt transformers and wine casks started medical researcher Taher Omari's passion for science.
The news everyone else missed.
The world's most beautiful photographs of the creatures and places that make our planet unique - from the winners of the 2005 Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Aping around does not include spite or kindness. It seems those qualities are exclusively human, as Vanessa Woods reveals.
From its first chapter in the suburb of Balwyn, a giant sisterhood of ants has tunnelled its way under most of Melbourne. Graeme O'Neill has the low-down.
Weighing up to two tonnes and measuring three metres in diameter, the ocean sunfish is the world's largest bony fish and possibly the least attractive.
Previously known chiefly from biblical texts, excavations in Jordan are slowly revealing the true nature of the Canaanite people. David Ellyard digs up the dirt.
Since returning to Earth, astronaut Alan Bean has spent decades trying to capture in paint the feeling of walking on the Moon. Andrew Smith meets the only artist to have walked on the moon.
Rick Lovett describes an icy plume of water spewing from one of Saturn's moons that may finally explain a troubling mystery of Saturn's enigmatic rings.
From the videotape wars of the early '80s, VHS emerged the winner. So what ever happened to Beta? Sara Phillips investigates.
The automobile gave us unprecedented mobility - that's unanimous. But ask who invented the contraption and you might ruffle some feathers.
While proudly 'nuclear free' today, New Zealand was once a hotbed of uranium prospecting. Rebecca Priestley describes why Kiwi minds were changed.
The search to understand our inhospitable sister-world begins on the unwelcoming steppe of Kazakhstan. Robin McKie braves the cold.
One night, Jules is confronted by unpleasant strangers with guns. He doesn't like them at all. "Empathy", original fiction by Chris Lawson.
Kashmir sits on a seismic fault line that scientists are racing to understand, for, as Jan McGirk reveals, they know that the devastating quake of 2005 is only a precursor to a truly catastrophic disaster.
Reviews of books, DVDs and TV.
Gadgets with a spotlight on wireless broadband
Facts, fun, trivia and clever birds
The funny side of cancer
