With several international partnerships already in train, and a $2 billion injection from the most recent federal budget, Australia is placing big bets on hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen looks like one of the best ways to store and transport renewable energy – but as a flammable, leaky gas, there are still big questions around how hydrogen itself should be made, stored and transported. Pure hydrogen, H2, can be transported as a compressed gas, or super-cooled until it’s a liquid. It can also be reacted with other chemicals to become more stable. Two of the most promising ways to do this are as ammoni ..read more

An Australian team of researchers has developed a better way to screen people who might have been making improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Organic Peroxide Explosives (OPEs) are frequently used by terrorists, because they can be made from readily available materials and mixed in a domestic kitchen. OPEs have been used in IEDs in terrorism events including the 2015 Paris attacks, the 2016 Brussels attacks, the 2017 Manchester bombing and the 2019 Sri Lanka bombings. Swabs can pick up tiny traces of OPEs on skin, so it’s possible to screen for people who’ve carried or made OPEs. This is ofte ..read more

The film that forms on heated milk – the “skin” – is displaying a clever chemical reaction that could be used to make materials from solid-state batteries to wearable electronics sensors. An international team of researchers has adapted the milk-skin reaction into a quick and simple way to make flexible gels from sustainable biological materials. “In the milk-skin effect, a film forms at the outer layer of milk when it is heated,” says Professor Guihua Yu, a researcher at the University of Texas, US, and co-author on a paper describing the research, published in Nature Synthesis. Yu says the ..read more

We turn air into food, so why can’t we get carbon to leave the atmosphere – or helium to stay? In this episode of the podcast Huh? Science Explained, we’re diving into the gassy soup that surrounds Earth, and looking at the substances that stay in our atmosphere, the substances that leave, and the substances that we’d really like to remove. Huh? Science Explained is a LiSTNR podcast. Listen to more episodes of Huh? Science Explained ..read more

Look closely at a glass of champagne, and you’ll notice that the bubbles stream upwards in organised single-file chains. But in a glass of carbonated water, the bubbles zoom up from many different directions, veering about as they do. A group of US and French fluid mechanists have figured out why champagne forms these stable “bubble chains” when other bubbly drinks don’t. Read more: Bubbles! The physics of champagne Their findings, published in Physical Review Fluids, could also be used to explain bubble flows in industrial processes. “This is the type of research that I’ve been working out f ..read more