Exoplanets: The Hunt For New Worlds.
By Elaine Anderson
Ever looked up into the night sky and wondered what else is out there? Then while pondering on that, did you ever think if someone else or something else on another planet was thinking the same question? Well 2 years ago people might have thought you were crazy, or that thought was just a VERY distant dream. However, nowadays that isn’t…

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“What the Heck Magnets?” – Nuclear Fusion… Probably.
By Adam Donaghy
 

In a land before Tony Stark creating elements in his basement or tiny fusion reactors in his chest, people had to work out how the hell magnets worked. Because without magnets the deuterium and tritium (no that’s not the name of Zooey Deschanel’s character in the awful 2005 rendition of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to…

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Bare Sand Island: Bare, Sandy and Turtley
By Camille Acuna
Back in July 2013, I spent a week helping to collect data on Flatback turtles with Austurtle. It was hot, tiring and easily one of the best weeks of my life. This research is conducted to estimate population size, monitor abundance over time and any threats to survival.

The week was spent on Bare Sand Island and yes, it’s exactly as…

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Inflation: How The Universe Grew Up… Or Rather, Blew Up
By Timothy Newport
The Universe is awfully big. You know that already, but did you ever wonder how it got to be that size? Space is expanding, even accelerating, but there’s no way it could have gotten as big as it is at its current rate… unless it cheated a little.

Thanks to scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for…

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The Bleeding Edge: My Experience as a Blood Cancer Researcher
By Loughlin Turpin
As scientists, we are driven by the desire to know. We seek this knowledge in classrooms, laboratories and lecture halls, wanting to figure out how different systems in our universe operate and interact in order to hopefully solve problems facing society. In school, when we do experiments we often know from t…

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Infinite Monkeys Playing Infinite Gameboys
By Timothy Newport
E pluribus unum. “Out of many, one” was the original motto of the United States. Many things, coming together, can act as one.
This sort of behaviour has been observed in nature within beehives and rabbit warrens, with each creature’s decisions benefiting only itself, but the group as a whole accomplishing something. Additionally,…

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Nanotechnology: The World on a Miniature Scale
By Lucy Caine
Imagine you’re building a house, out of brick and mortar. Simple enough task, right? Now imagine that the bricks are all the size and shape of beach balls, and you can only move them using a pair of telephone poles. If that seems tricky to you, you’ve got an idea of what construction at the nanoscale is like: molecules are really…

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Why don’t vampires burn in moonlight?
By Ben Keirnan
 

A strange question I know but think about it for a minute, moonlight is reflected sunlight so why don’t vampires burn?

Vampires have been part of mythology and folklore since as early as ancient Greece but became popularised in the early 18th century. Although their appearance and attributes change over time a few things hav…

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I am a Scientist
by Julianna Rozek
 

I am a scientist.

After three years of undergraduate study majoring in environmental science and 279 days of honours research at the University of Melbourne I finally feel it.  It is great.

I have wanted to be an environmental scientist of sorts all my life.  That is a lie.  It is only since the end of my first year of university. …

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Monash TCSE 2014: Staffie Round-up
By Ben Keirnan
 

Editor’s Note: YSA Melbourne provides staff members (or staffies as they are affectionately known) and runs workshops for The ConocoPhillips Science Experience (TCSE). Recently, we helped run Monash Clayton TCSE 2014, and for the blog, our interstate staffie from Brisbane, Ben Keirnan, recounts all of the fun, thrills, and scienc…

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