Author: The Conversation

Many of the people watching The Last of Us are likely there for the zombies. I love the zombies too, but I’m really there for the fungus. I’ve been studying fungi since my PhD work in the 1980s, and I grow more fascinated by these amazing organisms with every passing year. In the HBO series and the video game that inspired it, a parasitic fungus — a fictitious mutation of the very real cordyceps — jumps from insects to humans and quickly spreads around the world, rendering its victims helpless to control their thoughts and actions. Far-fetched fungal fear-mongering? It’s definitely fictional, but maybe…

Robotic rovers are currently exploring the surface of Mars. Part of a rover’s mission is to survey the planet for signs of life. There might be nothing to find – but what if there is, and the rovers just can’t “see” it? New research published today in Nature Communications suggests the rovers’ current equipment might not actually be up to the task of finding evidence of life. As an extreme environment microbiologist, the challenges of searching for life where it seems near-impossible are familiar to me. In astrobiology, we study the diversity of life in sites on Earth with environmental or physical…

South Africa’s current electricity crisis has been described as “a perfect storm”. A number of factors have converged to reach this point: an ageing and inadequately maintained fleet of coal power stations, delays in upgrading the Koeberg nuclear power station and significant failures at the recently built Medupi and Kusile coal power stations. Since the beginning of 2022, power utility Eskom’s inability to meet the country’s electricity demand has resulted in unprecedented loadshedding (scheduled power cuts). In 2022, electricity interruptions totalled 3,775 hours over 205 days. The situation almost certainly will not improve any time soon. At the same time, Gauteng – South Africa’s most…

“Look at this,” says Erica’s message. She is poring over the very first images from the brand new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is July 2022, barely a week after those first images from the revolutionary super telescope were released. Twenty-five years in the making, a hundred to a thousand times more powerful than any previous telescope, one of the biggest and most ambitious scientific experiments in human history: it is hard to not speak in superlatives, and it is all true. The telescope took decades to build, because it had to be made foldable to fit on top…

South Africa’s electricity utility Eskom has made it clear that “loadshedding” – rolling scheduled power cuts – isn’t going to end any time soon. This reality, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement during his annual state of the nation speech on 9 February 2023 that tax incentives for solar power use are imminent, mean that many people are considering alternative electricity supply systems for their homes. But deciding on the best system isn’t a simple matter. There’s a bewildering array of jargon to sift through and many elements to consider, from the right kind of inverter to the size of your solar panels. We are electrical…

The US military has now shot down four high-altitude objects that had entered American and Canadian airspace, raising questions about their purpose and origin. The first of these objects, a Chinese balloon, was downed by a fighter jet on 4 February. While China says it was for weather monitoring, US officials say it was being used for surveillance. A knowledge of technology in this area throws up some clues about what may have been going on. The balloon is believed to have supported a signals intelligence collection payload, although this has yet to be confirmed. Debris has now been retrieved from US territorial waters…

20On the largest scales, the Universe is ordered into a web-like pattern: galaxies are pulled together into clusters, which are connected by filaments and separated by voids. These clusters and filaments contain dark matter, as well as regular matter like gas and galaxies. We call this the “cosmic web”, and we can see it by mapping the locations and densities of galaxies from large surveys made with optical telescopes. We think the cosmic web is also permeated by magnetic fields, which are created by energetic particles in motion and in turn guide the movement of those particles. Our theories predict that,…

Almost like aftershocks, questions about earthquake prediction tend to follow disasters like the Feb. 6, 2023, Turkey-Syria quake. Could advance notice have prevented some of the devastation? Unfortunately, useful predictions are still in the realm of science fiction. University of Washington professor of seismology and geohazards Harold Tobin heads the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. He explains the differences between predicting and forecasting earthquakes, as well as early warning systems that are currently in place in some areas. Can scientists predict a particular earthquake? In short, no. Science has not yet found a way to make actionable earthquake predictions. A useful prediction would specify…

The big idea Robotic boots providing superhuman reflexes can help your balance. Our new study shows that the key to augmenting balance is to have boots that can act faster than human reaction times. When people slip or trip, their reactions to regain balance are far slower than some machines can act. For humans, and other animals with legs, it takes time for biological sensors to send signals to the nervous system and then turn on muscles. Robots can act much faster, using wires instead of nerves to send their signals. But robots are still notoriously bad at balancing, because they can’t yet mimic…

Black holes could explain a mysterious form of energy that makes up most of the universe, according to astronomers. The existence of “dark energy” has been inferred from observations of stars and galaxies, but no one has been able to explain what it is, or where it comes from. The stuff, or matter, that makes up the familiar world around us is just 5% of everything in the universe. Another 27% is dark matter, a shadowy counterpart of ordinary matter which does not emit, reflect or absorb light. However, the majority of the cosmos – around 68% – is dark energy. The new evidence…