The idea of building settlements on Mars is a popular goal of billionaires, space agencies and interplanetary enthusiasts.

But construction demands materials, and we can’t ship it all from Earth: it cost US$243 million just to send NASA’s one ton Perseverance Rover to the Red Planet.

Unless we’re building a settlement for ants, we’ll need much, much more stuff. So how do we get it there?

CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellow and Swinburne alum Dr. Deddy Nababan has been pondering this question for years. His answer lies in the Martian dirt, known as regolith.

“Sending metals to Mars from Earth might be feasible, but it’s not economical...

Our bodies follow a natural 24-hour cycle known as the circadian rhythm that influences everything from sleep to metabolism. While scientists have long known that certain core circadian clock genes help regulate these rhythms, a new study led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine reveals that there is an additional layer of regulation—diet interacts with an individual’s genetic makeup, influencing daily patterns of gene activity in the liver, especially those related to fat metabolism.

These findings, published in Cell Metabolism, reveal a previously underappreciated temporal aspect of the interactions between genetics and the environment in regulating lipid metabolism, with implications for individual variat...

While quantum computers are already being used for research in chemistry, material science, and data security, most are still too small to be useful for large-scale applications. A study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, now shows how “scalable” quantum architectures—systems made up of many small chips working together as one powerful unit—can be made.

In the study, published as a letter in the journal Physical Review A, the researchers simulated realistic architectures and found that even imperfect links between quantum chips can still produce a functioning, fault-tolerant quantum system—a leap forward in scaling quantum hardware.

“Our work isn’t about inventing a new chip,” said Mohamed A...

A giant bubble of gas and dust surrounds the red supergiant DFK 52, likely created in a powerful outburst 4,000 years ago. Astronomers are baffled at how the star survived without going supernova, and suspect a hidden companion may have played a role. This discovery could reveal clues about the final stages of massive stars.

Astronomers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered a vast and expanding bubble of gas and dust surrounding a red supergiant star – the largest structure of its kind ever seen in the Milky Way...