|
One of the joys of a summer break is having a little more time available for reading.
Here we’ve pulled together a collection of 8-10 minute read “thinky” science stories you may have missed during the hustle and bustle of the working year.
Whether you’re keen on planet Mars and interplanetary visitors, designer babies and genes that shape gender, the Dreamtime and ancient
Australians, cherry-picking of science to suit political agendas or how geology shapes social history, we’ve got you covered.
Or maybe you’d prefer to take an evolution-themed motorbike ride across Australia.
It’s your holiday, after all.
|
Signs of life on Mars? These are the tracks of NASA’s Curiosity rover exploring the Martian landscape.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Paulo de Souza, CSIRO
Mars has long captured our imagination, from claims of canals to Martian attacks and now our latest NASA exploration to look inside the red planet.
|
An artist’s impression of `Oumuamua, the first interstellar object discovered in the Solar System.
ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser
Steven Tingay, Curtin University
We will never see 'Oumuamua again, and we may never know exactly what it is. But with the right kind of media coverage it could inspire some kids to take up a career in science.
|
Fact or fiction? Either way, an alien still seems menacing.
Cindy Zhi/The Conversation
Christopher Benjamin Menadue, James Cook University
Stephen Hawking raised the public profile of grand science, and speculated about the future of artificial intelligence, as well as contacting aliens. Does science mix easily with science fiction?
|
Biology and babies
|
Jenny Graves, La Trobe University
There are many cultural and social factors involved in making a baby into a man or a woman. But biologically speaking, sex starts when you're just a tiny group of cells in your mother's uterus.
| |
Merlin Crossley, UNSW
Genome editing technology has, and will always have, limits. Limits that are related not to the technology itself but to the intrinsic complexity of the human genome.
|
|
|
It’s been 50 years since the find of burnt bones in ancient soil, eroded from deep in shoreline dune in NSW.
Jim Bowler
Jim Bowler, University of Melbourne
It's been half a century since Jim Bowler discovered Mungo Lady, which changed the course of Australian history. But now he says the find has fallen off the national radar, leaving a legacy of shame.
|
Lake Mungo and the surrounding Willandra Lakes of NSW were established around 150,000 years ago.
from www.shutterstock.com
David Lambert, Griffith University
New techniques for genetic analysis are helping us build more detailed and accurate stories about the ancient histories of the first Australians.
|
