In the 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler figured out the laws of motion that made it possible to accurately predict where our solar system’s planets would appear in the sky as they orbit the sun. But it wasn’t until decades later, when Isaac Newton formulated the universal laws of gravitation, that the underlying principles were understood.

Although they were inspired by Kepler’s laws, they went much further, and made it possible to apply the same formulas to everything from the trajectory of a cannon ball to the way the moon’s pull controls the tides on Earth—or how to launch a satellite from Earth to the surface of the moon or planets.

Today’s sophisticated artificial intelligence systems have gotten very good at making the kind...

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...