Investigating solar panels, joint lubricants, COVID-19 and much more.
A neutron beam instrument, gifted to Australia by German materials research agency HZB, is now operating at the ANSTO nuclear reactor in Sydney.
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Making wine in a warming world
South Australian winemakers are looking to Europe as the climate—and what drinkers want—is changing.
Grapes don’t ripen the way they used to. As temperatures climb, they are getting sweeter faster.
Winemakers find that by the time the crop achieves the right colour or level of tannins, the grapes contain more sugar. More sugar means heavier, more alcoholic wine. At the same time, drinkers are preferring lighter wines Continue reading Making wine in a warming world
Finding the way to zero-carbon energy
German and Australian researchers are seeking opportunities in transition.
Moving away from fossil fuels is challenging, but it also presents huge opportunities. At the Energy Transition Hub, more than 140 Australian and German researchers are working together to tackle the social and technical challenges and take advantage of the trade and export opportunities.
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Bone mechanics
Italian and Australian researchers are figuring out how bones and joints fail.
Almost five million Australians over 50 suffer from osteoporosis, and the number is rising.
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Inventing the ultimate suspension system
To hear tiny vibrations from half a galaxy away, first you need to filter out the Earth’s constant rumbling.
At gravitational wave observatories such as the European Advanced Virgo in Italy, scientists try to detect ripples in spacetime caused by colliding black holes and other stellar cataclysms.
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The world’s largest scientific instrument
In a whisper-quiet area of the outback in Western Australia, 133,000 radio telescope antennas are about to be built.
When complete, they’ll be able to pick up radio signals from the time when the first stars in the universe formed.
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50 CubeSats to explore the thermosphere
Australian universities joined a European fleet of CubeSats to explore a little-known layer of the atmosphere.
In May 2017, the European Union led a mission called QB50 to launch a constellation of 50 mini-satellites from the International Space Station. The pocket-sized CubeSats set out to study the thermosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere between 90 and 600 kilometres above the ground that carries signals from GPS and other satellites.
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Hypersonic travel
Brussels to Sydney in less than three hours.
A passenger jet could one day fly halfway around the world in just a few hours. That’s the goal of the High-speed Experimental Fly project (HEXAFLY): going beyond the supersonic realm pioneered by the now-defunct Concorde to reach hypersonic speeds more than five times as fast as sound.
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International eye in the sky
The Copernicus Earth-observation program delivers a steady stream of information about how the planet changes from day to day.
Run by the European Commission and the European Space Agency, Copernicus uses satellites called Sentinels that continuously monitor Earth from space and tools on the ground for calibration and cross-checking.
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Compound interest
What happens when disaster builds on disaster
Climate change will bring hotter weather and rising seas, but what it means for natural disasters such as floods and fires is less clear.
Part of the difficulty is that such catastrophes are often “compound events” in which multiple factors combine to wreak havoc.
Continue reading Compound interest