Fresh Science

Andy Casey – Monash University Mysterious lithium-rich stars either have hidden twins or have devoured their own planets, a new study has found. A team of astrophysicists has discovered 2,330 giant stars with huge amounts of lithium. Theory says stars like this should not exist, says Monash University’s Dr Andy Casey.

Galaxies fuel their enormous growth by stopping for gas from space, a Victorian astronomer has found. Dr Alan Duffy, of The University of Melbourne, has discovered how galaxies grow hundreds of times bigger without a decrease in the gas they use to form stars, an inverse relationship that had previously remained a mystery. “I could…

Canberra scientists have unravelled the origin of stars found in the ‘peanut’ of our galaxy, questioning previously held theories about galactic collisions. Melissa Ness and her team at the Australian National University used data from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Siding Spring to show that the stars in the central bulge of our galaxy were 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.