Fresh Science

A new class of super-accurate atomic clocks may detect miniscule changes in the laws of physics and shed light on how and why life exists in the universe, Sydney physicists have found. Andrew Ong and his collaborators at the University of New South Wales discovered that the clocks could detect potential changes in a fundamental…

Soccer ball-like molecules may help improve the performance of plastic solar cells, which could be used as the next-generation energy source, a Melbourne physicist says. Yaou Smets, a PhD student at La Trobe University, and his colleagues from Australian Synchrotron and University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, used a small amount of fluorinated C60-buckyballs to understand the…

By travelling backwards it’s pushing knowledge forwards All planets move around their stars in the same direction as the star spins—at least that’s what we thought. But now Australian National University astronomer Dr Daniel Bayliss and his colleagues have found that some planets break the mould.

You may not be able to squeeze blood out of a stone but—by applying the right amount of ultrasound during processing—Jianhua (Jason) Du and colleagues from the University of South Australia have been able to squeeze a considerable amount of fresh water from mining waste.