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New technology takes kilos off early universe’s supermassive black holes

The monster black hole was first discovered by Associate Professor Christian Wolf and his team at The Australian National University in 2024 and, using brand-new powerful optical equipment at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, researchers have now been able to magnify the black hole’s light and get a closer look at the gas swirling around it. “Instead of rapidly rotating as previously…

Scientists sidestep Heisenberg uncertainty principle in precision sensing experiment

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, introduced in 1927, says that you can’t know certain pairs of properties – such as a particle’s position and momentum – with unlimited precision at the same time. In other words, there is always a trade-off in uncertainty: the more closely one property is pinned down, the less certainty there is about the other. The researchers also use the analogy of a…

Wet-and-wild water worlds may form under pressure

The presence of water is a key ingredient in determining a planet’s habitability, and water has been thought to form through condensation from space as ice or snow at low temperatures. This process has typically been observed in exoplanets between the size of Earth and Neptune that are located far away from their host star. However, NASA’s Kepler mission has found exoplanets between the sizes of…

Twin black hole mergers reveal secrets of cosmic evolution

The pair of gravitational-wave events, named GW241011 and GW241110, were detected in late 2024, just one month apart, during the O4b observing run of the global detector network. Each signal was produced by the violent merger of two black holes, forming an even more massive remnant and sending ripples through space-time, each travelling for hundreds of millions to billions of years before…

Aussie nanosatellite completes first phase of mission

Led by the University of Melbourne, in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, the Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal nanosatellite – known as ‘SpIRIT’ – is the first space telescope funded by the Australian Space Agency to carry a foreign space agency’s scientific instrument as its main payload. Since its launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California in December 2023,…

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ATSpace Launch, Martian Lightning and First Light Captured at ESO in Chile

Southern Launch’s Koonibba Facility sees AT01 fly, we deep dived into bringing James Webb into focus and how traffic vibrations saved a tonne of research money. This is the wrap of the past five Talkin’ Science daily bites…

ESA launches a new deep space antenna in WA

Located in New Norcia, about 115 km north of Perth, Western Australia, the ‘New Norcia 3’ antenna will help meet the agency’s fast-increasing data download needs and secure Europe’s independence and leadership in space. Started in 2021 and delivered on schedule, this construction is the result of the outstanding capabilities of ESA, European and Australian industry, and excellent cooperation…

Australian technology captures first light at Chilean observatory

The 4MOST – or the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope – facility uses an optical fibre positioning system built by Macquarie University’s Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO), allowing the telescope to simultaneously observe thousands of celestial objects, from stars and planets to nebulae and black holes. At the heart of 4MOST sits AESOP – the Australian-European Southern Observatory…

Traffic vibrations help scientists dig deep into Lake George’s seismic past

According to the researchers, the study provides “unprecedented” insights into the structural characteristics of the Lake George fault zone, which runs along the western boundary of the lake. They say the fault holds clues about past earthquakes in the area. Using a network of 100 beer can-sized seismometers placed in the then-dry lakebed and near the highway, the researchers analysed traffic…

Listening to lightning on Mars

The observations indicate that Mars’s atmosphere is electrically active, informing our understanding of the planet’s atmospheric chemistry and may have implications for future exploration. In our Solar System, lightning and electrical activity occur on Earth, Saturn, and Jupiter. And while the existence of electrical activity on Mars has been theorized, it’s never been directly…

ATSpace Launch A01 From Koonibba

The A01 mission was the inaugural launch attempt of AtSpace’s A01 rocket and marks an incredible step forward as AtSpace continues to develop their innovative hybrid rocket engines here in Australia. The launch was conducted from the Koonibba Test Range, developed by Southern Launch in partnership with the Koonibba Community Aboriginal Corporation.

Students Help Bring James Webb Into Focus

A pair of Sydney PhD students helped sharpen the view of humanity’s most powerful space observatory – without leaving Earth. The remarkable technical breakthrough saw the development of a software fix that corrected blurring in images made by NASA’s multibillion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope,restoring crisp performance to one of its vital scientific instruments – all without the need for a…

Aussie Students Sharpen James Webb As We Ponder A Martian Tale of Ice and Fire

From two Sydney students fixing an instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope to a global analogue space mission and new theories on the location of Martian Ice… This is the wrap of the past five Talkin’ Science daily bites…

A Martian tale of ice and fire

The authors suggest these eruptions may also have led to conditions that allowed these ice deposits to continue to exist under the surface today, and the findings could be useful in identifying potential sites for exploration in future manned missions. We had thought most of Mars’ ice was at its poles, but recent measurements have suggested there is also ice nearer the planet’s equator, leading…

Australia on board global analogue space mission

The University and international space testing, research, and development start-up ICEE.Space joined forces for the ADAMA Analogue Astronaut Mission in Adelaide, Australia last month. Four analogue astronauts crewed a mission in a controlled environment at the University’s Extraterrestrial Environmental Simulation Covered Regolith Analogue Terrain for Experimental Research facility, located at…

Discovery of binary stars the first step in creating "movie of the universe"

The study’s lead author, ANU researcher Dr Giacomo Cordoni, said the Legacy Survey of Space and Time – or LSST – will build an extraordinary “movie of the universe”. “This survey–run from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile–will allow us to track billions of stars and galaxies as they change over time. It’s designed to unravel the history of star clusters, galaxies and the Milky Way itself,”…

Who should we send to Mars? Diverse personalities may be key

They say including a diversity of personalities may make for a more resilient team when faced with the stress and isolation of such a long mission. The team fed their simulations data about personality types and psychological theories, investigating how five personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness – affect the various mission roles and…

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