This year’s festival runs 14 to 22 August, with thousands of events around Australia.

National Science Week 2021 runs from 14 to 24 August. Explore the big topics, brilliant minds, and unexpected ideas from the world of science.

The struggle for women physicists takes many forms, but certain elements are universal, as these examples from Pakistan, India and South Africa show.

Dr Anisa Qamar: “I was the only woman in the physics faculty.”

Professor Mmantsae Moche Diale: “In big conferences, there are very few black women.”

Professor Prajval Shastri: “Such bad mentoring has no consequences.”

Astronomical Society of Australia honours stargazers at annual conference

Six Australian astronomers will be recognised by the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA), the country’s professional body for the field.

‘Magneto-rotational hypernova’ soon after the Big Bang fuelled high levels of uranium, zinc in ancient stellar oddity

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A massive explosion from a previously unknown source – 10 times more energetic than a supernova – could be the answer to a 13-billion-year-old Milky Way mystery.

Adelaide invention revolutionises veterinary x-rays

Your best friend can’t tell you where it hurts but now, thanks to an invention by Adelaide company Micro-X, vets have a better tool to diagnose your pet’s health problems.

New technique helps NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

Astronomers have turned a cluster of galaxies into a gargantuan magnifying lens, using it to study another galaxy, 10.7 billion light years away, in unprecedented detail.

Issued on behalf of the People for a Living Moorabool

Farmers, conservationists, and others available for interview + photos and HD overlay

Film premiere on Saturday 26 June in Ballarat

“The Moorabool River will continue to deteriorate and die unless we give back some of its water,” says Cameron Steele, coordinator of river protection group, People for A Living Moorabool.

Detailed cross-section of another galaxy reveals surprising similarities to our home

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The first detailed cross-section of a galaxy broadly similar to the Milky Way, published today, reveals that our galaxy evolved gradually, instead of being the result of a violent mash-up. The finding throws the origin story of our home into doubt.

The galaxy, dubbed UGC 10738, turns out to have distinct ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ discs similar to those of the Milky Way. This suggests, contrary to previous theories, that such structures are not the result of a rare long-ago collision with a smaller galaxy. They appear to be the product of more peaceful change.

And that is a game-changer. It means that our spiral galaxy home isn’t the product of a freak accident. Instead, it is typical.

Using unique carbon nanotube technology, hospital grade X-ray imaging now available for field hospitals and humanitarian missions

Adelaide company Micro-X (ASX: MX1) has won the Land Forces 2021 National Innovation Award for inventing and manufacturing Rover, a lightweight go-anywhere X-ray machine ruggedised and optimised for high intensity use in field hospitals and remote locations.

Military doctors aim to provide combat soldiers who go in harm’s way with no less a standard of medical care than they can expect at home. However, conventional, hospital-grade mobile x-ray machines are heavy (typically 400 to 600kg), power hungry and very hard to move around on uneven surfaces.

So, prior to the Rover’s development, only small-animal veterinary x-rays units were light enough to be deployed by military forces.