Beyond Infinity

CSIRO has found a way of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere using sponge-like metal-organic frameworks. The project, called Airthena, can be scaled up and used in a wide variety of industrial applications, including making fizzy drinks.

Mars is a busy place in 2020. Four more spacecraft are set to blast off to the red planet: Mars 2020 rover from NASA, the ExoMars Europe/Russia rover, a small Chinese rover and the Hope orbiter from the United Arab Emirates. The Hope Mars Mission is an effort to gain the technical know how to further the UAE's space capabilities and symbolise hope for all young Arabs.

In groundbreaking legal action, a Melbourne dentist has persuaded the Federal Court of Australia to ask Google for a damaging online business review to be removed. Reform and redress of anonymous business reviews is urgently needed.

More than 10% of the world’s entire human population is in lock down. We outline the World Health Organisation's recommendations at a time of rising fears of a global viral pandemic. We discuss the benefits and issues of the quarantine process, asymptomatic spreading of the disease and the need for good personal and respiratory hygiene by travelers.

John reports that the latest 'flip phone' from Motorola is a lemon. He says it suffers from poor durability, screen flickering, green lines and squeaks when opening and closing. For US$1500 you might get 18 months out of it. As big a fail as the Galaxy Fold debacle...

Our digital fingerprints are everywhere. Big data allows all sorts of insights into human behaviour - some for good, some ill. Researchers at the University of Virginia reckon the language of text messaging may one day enable medicos to foresee increased risk of suicide.

Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are teaming up to create the Global Developer Service Alliance. It'll provide a platform for international developers to upload apps to all of their app stores and is a direct assault on the dominance of the Google Play store.

Sunday February 9, 2020 saw the successful launch of an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral carrying Solar Orbiter on a ground-breaking mission to the Sun. The mainly European spacecraft is bristling with instruments to study the heliosphere, hazardous coronal mass ejections and help scientists understand our star's 11 year activity cycle.

The US Department of Justice accused San Francisco startup Practice Fusion of creating software to increase pain med prescriptions by medical practitioners. The company, which provided software to thousands of doctors' offices, settled for US$145 million.

An expensive new treatment promises gradually to protect allergic children from accidental exposure to small amounts of peanuts.

A look at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the amazing astrophysics research taking place above and below the ice. The observatory is looking for neutrinos - enigmatic subatomic particles that permeate the universe. It involves over 300 scientists at 52 institutions in 12 countries.

As its July 2020 launch date approaches, more information is coming to light about NASA's sophisticated new rover headed for Mars. Expect to see hi-res colour video of the entry, descent and landing sequence from multiple viewpoints, including the sky crane maneuver and touch down. There's also a new super-precise landing navigation system which can steer the rover away from dangerous obstacles it sees during descent. Terrain-relative navigation (TRN) allows for a highly targeted landing in Jezero crater - an extremely rugged, yet scientifically valuable site.

Imagine a super-advanced civilisation capable of building on a galactic scale, enjoying complete mastery of the most exotic laws of physics. You'll need to think big, like Dr. Albert Jackson at Triton Systems in Houston, whose paper 'A Neutrino Beacon' offers a new take on alien megastructures. As Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, once wrote: “When we look into the universe for signs of artificial activities, it is technology and not intelligence that we must search for. It would be much more rewarding to search directly for intelligence, but technology is the only thing we have any chance of seeing.”

Software experts, including our own John Young, are urging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10 as a decade of support for 7 winds up. It's estimated well over 20% of all PC users are still running the aging operating system, leaving them exposed to risks of hacking, ransomware and data loss.

San Diego start-up BlueNalu has found a way to make a plant-based fillet of yellowfish. Crucially, the lab-made seafood can be cooked by direct heat without disintegrating. Scaling up to commercial quantities will be a big challenge.

With bushfires still burning out of control in South Eastern Australia, the nation's capital Canberra was hit by an ice storm, damaging thousands of cars and buildings. Wildlife and trees have also been pounded.

The bushfire emergency has killed over a billion animals and decimated national parks and old growth forests. Now seems a good time to listen again to our in-depth interview on anthropogenic climate change with Professor David Karoly, recorded in 2016. We discuss global warming, its impacts and implications for the planet. The podcast includes an update on the enormous and tragic losses of native flora and fauna in Australia, plus how to donate and support recovery efforts.

With 1.5% of Australia's land mass burnt in disastrous bushfires - an area bigger than Scotland - and 1.25 billion animals lost, we revisit an in-depth interview we did in 2016 with leading climatologist Professor David Karoly. He spoke about human-induced climate change, its impacts and implications for the planet.

There are mounting fears about foreign-made apps hoovering up sensitive personal data. The proposed National Security and Personal Data Protection Act would try to stop foreign app owners from collecting any more data from American users than is necessary to provide their service.

Fossilised Antarctic seashells show the planet was unstable, warmed by intense volcanism, long before it was smashed by the notorious space rock impact 66 million years ago.