THE WATER CRISIS
Australia is facing a water crisis. The population has increased 20-fold in the last 200 years, and climate change is about to make things worse: where rain once was plentiful, it is likely to decrease. But now, more than ever technology offers solutions. The only question is whether the public will swallow it. Sara Phillips reports. |
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LIFE IN 2020
A hyper-advanced civilisation may command such unimaginable power that it can fashion worlds and consume whole suns. But it would still be bound by the laws of physics, Robin McKie reveals.
WASTE INTO OIL
It sounds miraculous: a machine that converts almost any waste into that desperately needed resource, oil. Brad Lemley explains why industry may one day be powered by turkey carcasses.
HUNT FOR THE GOD PARTICLE
Our understanding of the universe and its origins relies on the existence of an elementary particle no one has even detected. Peter Calamai follows the hunt for the very elusive Higgs boson.
DISTANT WORLDS
Pluto and Xena are distant, cold and mysterious - and studying them is likely to help explain how planets are formed and even how life arose. But, Fred Watson asks, are they planets?
THE NATURAL
Jane Goodall's detailed observations of chimpanzees in the wild changed the way we view our primate cousins - and now, as Véronique Morin recounts, she wants to change the world.
What is today the world's largest diamond mine was once a barren, sweltering wilderness awaiting discovery by a young Maureen Muggeridge and her tiny field team.
It's the International Year of Deserts, and we celebrate with a stunning pictorial some of the most beautiful locales on Earth.
Mapping the genome was just the beginning: unlocking the mystery of how they work is another thing altogether, reports David Salt.
Otherwise known as a Polish plait, Plica polonica is a disease where the hair becomes a matted, smelly, sticky cement-like mass. Oh how pleasant.
A long-term study in New Zealand is beginning to make sense of how genes and the environment interact to make us what we are, says Veronika Meduna.
Is Australia's coral wonderland threatened with extinction, Jeni Payne asks, or will it move south to Sydney as global warming and farming run-off drives it away?
Among the most treasured possessions of Queen Elizabeth I was a tusk that she believed to be the horn of a mythical unicorn. In fact it came from a narwhal, a deep-water Arctic mammal.
Far beneath the blue ice of the world's glaciers lies a new world waiting to be discovered by an intrepid group of extreme scientists. Jacopo Pasotti has the story.
How does your garden grow? Mitchell Whitelaw meets a new breed of computer-programming artists who are finding out and then using that knowledge to fuel their imaginations.
Chemistry's most useful invention started with a game of cards.
They're exhilarating, dramatic, and completely, wildly addictive. Once you've tasted a total eclipse, you may well go back - again and again.
Science news everyone else missed
Australian born Tennille Mares crossed 'the ditch' to do her PhD in geology at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
"I'm driving round to Bob's," said Ern. "There's UFOs in his chook house again." Original fiction, "Street of the dead", by Australian Cat Sparks.
Funky technology, with a spotlight on telescopes. Edited by our resident technophile, Tim Dean
Reviews of books and DVDs. Edited by the mercurial Bob Guntrip.
Facts, fun, trivia ... and a fish called Jaws. Edited by Sara Phillips.
In the very near future, satirical columnists could be replaced by computers. And they might even be funny.
