24 articles from SUNDAY 4.12.2022

‘Are we alone in the universe?’: Work begins in Western Australia on world’s most powerful radio telescope

More than 100,000 antennas will be built on Wajarri country, enabling astronomers to peek billions of years back to the ‘cosmic dawn’Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastConstruction of the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), has officially begun in Australia after three decades in development.A huge...

Accelerating pathogen identification in infants and children with bloodstream infections

A collaborative team has re-engineered the process of microbial pathogen identification in blood samples from pediatric sepsis patients using broad-spectrum pathogen capture technology. The advance enables accurate pathogen detection with a combination of unprecedented sensitivity and speed, and could significantly improve clinical outcomes for pediatric and older patients with bloodstream...

What does it take to be an astronaut? After dreaming of the stars, I decided to find out | Kevin Fong

I got very close to becoming a European Space Agency astronaut, but the final lesson was a bittersweet oneIn February 2021, the European Space Agency (Esa) announced it would be recruiting a new astronaut class, the first since 2008. It encouraged applicants from a broader spectrum of gender, physical ability, age and ethnicity, so I fired off an application and joined a WhatsApp group of...