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Taking Photos of the Atom
So you’re into sci fi? But what about sci fact? Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction… Each month our very own Voyager Science Queen* will bring you interesting, quirky and downright bizarre tasty...
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Curiosity
Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Albert Einstein This past July and August was a very exciting time for the scientific...
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The Sexual Dimorphism of the Hair of Human Beings
Winner of the Beards and Moustaches World Championship 2011: Germany’s Elmar Weisser (Picture from BBC News website) Sexual dimorphism is the phenomenon of gender-specific secondary sexual...
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Creative Gifts
For Parents: Semi-autonomous robotic arms Every mother and father longs for a second pair of hands, particularly when washing a slippery, wriggling newborn; Federico Parietti and Harry Asada of the...
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Lynne’s Top Five Science Stories for 2012.
5. Curiosity Rover Curiosity was just about the most talked about science event of the year. It had a spectacular landing on Mars, and since then has been sending back new marvels every week. This may...
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What the Frack?
Image from the www.fraw.org.uk site Australians have always delighted in a wealth of resources; we even sing about them in our national anthem: “Our land abounds in nature’s gifts”. However, because...
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The Anatomy of Squee
The Eastern Pygmy Possum; Photo courtesy of the Australian Conservation Foundation What triggers the ‘squee’ response? What makes an image or physical entity so sweet that you automatically want to hug...
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Planes, Trains and Automobiles
I always enjoy researching the Science Page for April. This year, instead of a ‘prank’ article, I thought I’d share history of one of the more bizarre inventions … the train merged with an airplane. I...
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Man’s Best Friend
Working sheep dog from Victorian era (British Museum Archives) I have something of a reputation as a crazy cat lady, but to be truthful I like dogs as much as I like cats. Dogs play a very important...
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The Cerise Slug
Foster’s Rule states that a species gets smaller or larger depending on the resources available to it – this is also known as the Island Rule. Australia isn’t an island, but it is home to some...
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The Smell of Fresh Mown Grass
Picture from Canberra Floriade Tourist website Most of our understanding and general knowledge about the language of scent comes from the animal world. Most people know that dogs and other animals mark...
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Ants in Muddy Waters
image from Wikipedia Surviving and thriving in the environment in an Australian mangrove swamp is challenging. The twice daily inundation of seawater means that twice a day all land-based animals have...
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The Woozle Effect
“This…whatever-it-was…has now been joined by another…whatever-it-is… and they are now proceeding in company. Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they turn out to be Hostile Animals?” — A. A....
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Eucritta melanolimnetes – the True Creature from the Black Lagoon
Still from the movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon The first animals to colonise dry land were the amphibian-like tetrapods; for the non-zoologists, tetrapods are all the four-limbed vertebrates...
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The Uncanny Valley
“My misfortune is that I resemble a man too much. I should like to be wholly a beast like that goat.” From the ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ by Victor Hugo When you watch an animated human being...
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The Steampunk Genre
Photograph of the Steampunk Ghostbusters at Steamfest 2013 This holiday month, instead of a straightforward article about science, I thought I’d discuss one of the fastest-growing genres in Science...
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Science as Hero and Villain
A real scientist sees and considers all the facts…whereas a bad scientist deliberately ignores the facts that don’t support his or her theory. Lynne Lumsden Green Bad Science. Bad science infuriates...
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Living in 3D
The New Z Printer 850 by 3D Systems; marketing image from company website Back in the 1980s, I was a keen follower of programs that presented innovative technologies. One of the most exciting programs...
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Seeing Stripes
Stripes are a distinctive pattern. Stripes do not crop up in the animal kingdom as much as you might think. However, when they do make an appearance, the animals are so distinctive that they loom large...
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Serendipity
Serendipity: an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. In the field of Science, serendipity was a key factor in some discoveries. Luck plays its part, but the real good fortune was the...
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