About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the cosmos was a very dark place. The glow of the universe’s explosive birth had cooled, and space was filled with dense gas — mostly hydrogen — with no sources of light. Slowly, over hundreds of millions of years, the gas was drawn into clumps by gravity, and ...
For decades, psychology departments worldwide have studied human behavior in darkened laboratories that restrict natural movements, such as walking. Our new study, published in Nature Communications, challenges the wisdom of this approach. Using virtual reality (VR), we have revealed previously hidden aspects of perception that occur during a simple everyday action — walking. We found ...
The Australian continent is now geologically stable. But volcanic rocks, lava flows, and a contemporary landscape dotted with extinct volcanoes show this wasn’t always the case. Between 40 and 20 million years ago — during the Eocene to Miocene epochs — there was widespread volcano activity across eastern Australia. In places such as western Victoria ...
Australia can lay claim to two new native mammal species, which were discovered as part of our collaborative research published in the journal Molecular Ecology. Australia has some of the most unique biodiversity in the world, and our native mammals are particularly well known. For many, the iconic marsupials might be the first that come ...
An article published this week in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine documents what is believed to be the first evidence that Alzheimer’s disease can be transmitted from person to person. The finding arose from long-term follow up of patients who received human growth hormone (hGH) that was taken from brain tissue of deceased donors. Preparations ...
During ice ages, dry, frozen terrain extended over much of northern Europe, Asia, and North America. Many plants and animals retreated from these desolate, harsh landscapes and sought refuge in pockets of more hospitable territory. But what was happening in the rest of the world? For a long time, scientists have thought that dry conditions ...
Few plants conjure up the Australian bush better than banksias, whose beautiful flowers are irresistible to honeyeater birds, small marsupials, and nature lovers. But our research, published in Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, shows that the ancestors of banksias actually migrated here from North Africa. We already knew from early fossil pollen studies ...
Colorful flowers and the insects and birds that fly among their dazzling displays are a joy of nature. But how did early relationships between flower color and animal pollinators emerge? In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, we have unraveled this mystery by analyzing the visual environments in which the ancestors of ...
Some 9,700 years ago, on an autumn day, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia. They were hunter-gatherers who had been fishing, hunting, and collecting resources in the area. Some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue just after eating trout, deer, and hazelnuts. Due to ...
Some of us remember August 24, 2006, like it was yesterday. It was the day Pluto got booted from the exclusive “planets club”. I (Sara) was 11 years old, and my entire class began lunch break by passionately chanting, “Pluto is a planet,” in protest of the information we’d just received. It was a touching ...