Diversifying Aquaculture
You are in a restaurant and the server comes up to take your order. You think about getting grilled steak, but you decide to go with some seafood– or more specifically, fish. Most likely, your meal comes from a “farm” for farming fish (in the water, of course). We are going to talk about a few new fish that were discovered in the past few years.
Most Meteorites on Earth are “Siblings”!
Imagine: you are in a dark, black, space. You see stars in the distance, and you can’t hear anything. You can’t see any light other than the shiny surfaces of planets and the stars that might have planets that support life, just like your beautiful planet Earth does. What you are imagining is space, where we can also find meteors.
Killer Whales on the Hunt
The 8-meter killer whale, otherwise known as Orcinus orca prey on animals like turtles, fish and other marine mammals. Scientists have found that killer whales have the abilities to hunt the biggest known fish on Earth: the whale shark!
Largest Known Prime Number Discovered
Luke Durant found the largest prime number in October of 2024. It contains 41,024,320 digits. The number was 2136279841-1 on GIMPS.
Luke Durant, a 36-year-old NVIDIA employee, used GPUs to conclude that 2136279841-1 is prime. Durant is a member of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). GIMPS has named this number M136279841 instead of the actual number (because the actual amount would be too large to write). Durant’s number beats the previous number (discovered in 2016) in digits, by 16,000,000 digits. He was in a line at the airport when he found that one of his supercomputers had come out with a number that was probably prime. He says he “wasn’t as excited as I could be about finding the number.”
New Ways to Explore the Depths of the Ocean
Researcher Kylie Maguire from CSIRO sits in front of a large computer screen. Her eyes dart around the page as she looks at the newly taken pictures from an expedition off Southern Tasmania, and her eyes stop at one of them. Kylie recognises what it is: an underwater nursery for the Antarctic skate! Her colleagues all stare at their own computer screens, peering at the images taken by the underwater picture takers Marimba, UMI and IMOS. This scene shows use of the IMOS (Integrated Marine Observing System) and the UMI (Understanding of Marine Imagery project) which are showing the underwater world to scientists and the general public and building on to different projects.
Old Clothes are Recycled into Concrete
Over 200,000 tonnes of textiles end up in Australian landfills.
A team at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia have found a way to lower this number. David Law, Chamila Gunasekara, Shadi Houshyar, Sujeeva Setunge and Nayanatara Ruppegoda Gamage are all part of the team that used old textiles as a material in concrete to help reduce cracks and boost the durability of it.
Scientists Make a Spider-Man Inspired Silk and Web Shooter
Marco Lo Presti of Silklab at Tufts University in the US was cleaning his glassware with acetone; he has recently been doing a project making extremely strong adhesives and suddenly noticed a web-like thing forming at the bottom of the glass.
Becoming the Next Spiderman
Remember when you were a child and wanted to be a superhero? You’re not the only one, because children always want to become their favourite superhero, whether it be Batman, Superman, Iron Man, or Captain America. Since 1962, when the web-slinging, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man made his debut in Marvel Comics, he has been a favourite hero of children all over.
Saving the Great Barrier Reef
The Australian Great Barrier Reef is a site that is beautiful to its age. The GBR is more than 60,000 years old, and it is still a world travel destination. Over the past 230 years, the reef has become a home of shipwrecks. 1,200 ship vessels have been sunk on the reef, with only 114 being discovered. These include the HMS Pandora (1791), SS Gothenburg (1875), Foam (1893), SS Yongala (1911). In 1981, the GBR was declared a world heritage area, due to its ‘outstanding universal value’.
World’s Smallest Scuba Diver
The latest research by Lindsey Swierk, a scientist at Binghamton University, has found that a small, semi-aquatic species of lizard, now claims the title of ‘world’s smallest scuba diver.’