THE AI DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW: COMING SOON TO A CLINIC NEAR YOU
THE SCIENCE OF EVERYTHING
ISSUE 102
Future forecast
How clearly can science see ahead?
Do the bionic eyes have it?
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VISION QUEST
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WORLD VEG BANK SCIENCE OF SURFING METAMORPHOSIS MAGIC
COSMIC HUM
Grav waves hint at new physics
CONTENTS 60 32
FEATURES
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DIGEST
THE UNIVERSE IS HUMMING
Dispatches from the world of science 10 Where, exactly, is a sea star’s head? 11 Australians of the Year 2024 18 Focus: Moon 19 Guess the object 24 Webb Watch 26 What happened next?
Astrophysicist Sara Webb explains how a galaxy-sized telescope heard a symphony of gravitational waves – and how those waves might just change astronomy.
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NEXT BIG THING
Willy Susilo on next-gen cloud computing.
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FAVOURITE PLACES
Alan Collins takes us hiking through history.
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DICTIONARY OF WEATHER
Ever wondered what a heat dome really is? What about an atmospheric river, or bombogenesis? Meteorologist Nate Byrne clears away the clouds of confusion.
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THE LOST VEGETABLES
Natalie Parletta heads to Taiwan to see how the World Vegetable Center is securing global vegetable diversity.
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THE AI DOCTOR IS IN
Mark Pesce meets the radiologists – both human and AI – who are revolutionising breast cancer diagnosis based on 30 years of Australian data.
FROM TOP: MICHAEL NOLAN, STOCKTREK IMAGES / GETTY IMAGES.
REGULARS
COSMOS 102 AUTUMN 2024
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A YEAR ON ICE
Antarctica is often seen as an otherworldly place, but its fate will decide the future of our climate. In this issue’s gallery, discover what it’s like to study this remarkable continent.
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SCIENCE IN THE BALANCE
The university system is failing young scientists and seasoned academics alike. Jacinta Bowler asks how it’s affecting Australian research – and what we’re all losing because of it.
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FROM TOP: WORLD VEGETABLE CENTER. VICTOR DE SCHWANBERG / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, EPIC STOCK MEDIA / GETTY IMAGES.
SEEING THE FUTURE
Bionic eyes were once thought to be the future of treating eye disease, but gene therapy is catching up. Manuela Callari investigates which will win out.
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HISTORY OF PREDICTION
Mathematical models are at the heart of modern climate science, but they have been around for nearly 200 years. How far have we come? Drew Rooke looks back to look forward.
ZEITGEIST 96
PLANET PUZZLES
Got questions about our Solar System? So do planetary scientists, writes Evrim Yazgin.
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CATERPILLAR SOUP?
Imma Perfetto discovers that the journey from caterpillar to butterfly is cooler than The Very Hungry Caterpillar ever taught you.
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SURF’S UP
Waxhead and coastal scientist Rob Brander explains the physics behind making, breaking and catching waves.
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CURIOSITY CORNER
Jokes, slime-making and answers about what really happened after the Big Bang.
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MINDGAMES
Fiendishly fun puzzles.
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PROFILE
Astrophysicist and viral sensation, Rowina Nathan.
ALWAYS QUESTION ALWAYS WONDER At RiAus we’re committed to providing FREE ! ! # world of STEM. Join our community and explore our resource collection here education.riaus.org.au/
ISSUE 102
Editor Gail MacCallum Deputy Editor Lauren Fuge Art Director Kate Timms Graphic Designer Greg Barton RiAus Editor-in-Chief Ian Connellan Science Journalists Matthew Agius, Jacinta Bowler, Imma Perfetto, Ellen Phiddian, Petra Stock, Evrim Yazgin Digital Editor Ian Mannix Editorial Assistant Kosette Lambert Editor-at-Large Elizabeth Finkel cosmosmagazine.com CONTRIBUTORS Rob Brander, Nate Byrne, Manuela Callari, Alan Collins, Natalie Parletta, Mark Pesce, Drew Rooke, Willy Susilo, Sara Webb Mind Games Tess Brady / Snodger Puzzles THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF AUSTRALIA Executive Director Will Berryman Corporate Services Manager Sarah Brennen Engagement Manager Gavin Stone Education Manager Michelle McLeod Video Producer/Graphic Designer Marc Blazewicz Engagement Officer Jess Wallace Office Assistant Leif Gerhardy Digital Developer Andrew Greirson OFFICE CONTACT Editorial enquiries info@cosmosmagazine.com +61 8 7120 8600 PO Box 3652, Rundle Mall SA 5000 Australia Published by The Royal Institution of Australia Inc. ABN 98638459658
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Cosmos is produced on unceded Kaurna land, and we pay our respects to elders past and present. First Nations people are this country’s first scientists and we celebrate their connection to this place’s deep past and their critical role in its future.
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From the Editors WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? By the time you’re reading this, it’s possible that life other than this small blue dot’s has been found in the universe; that the cure to many cancers has been unlocked; that particles have been discovered that change our understanding of physics. Happily, around the world countless people are working towards these discoveries – spending years and decades combining their findings to create what history records as breakthroughs that transform our understanding of life, the universe and everything. Eureka events are invaluable tools to storytellers like us; what’s harder to describe is the careful work that produces them. Take climate. The models that are being used to forecast our shared future are genuinely mind-bending, but only a handful of people can claim to truly understand them. This issue Drew Rooke has taken up the challenge of researching their fascinating origins – looking beyond the vastly complex calculations they’ve become to understand the kernel inside. Trusting their reliability is one thing, but it’s much more powerful to understand the facts and mechanisms that go into producing their predictions, and how critical it is that we act on them. Also in this issue Sara Webb tunes into the hum of the cosmos, explaining how a galaxy-sized telescope formed from pulsars is finding and measuring gravitational waves that may shift physics (again!). Natalie Parletta takes a 50th anniversary tour of the World Vegetable Center Genebank to meet the delightfully quirky hunters and g atherers of the planet’s edible plants. Manuela Callari and Mark Pesce look at two innovations in medical research: the quest to restore sight, and the use of AI in clinical diagnoses. And everyone’s favourite meteorologist Nate Byrne explains why new words are needed to explain our changing weather. As always, we’ve got fun old and new: a year in the life of Antarctica, the physics of surfing, peering inside a caterpillar’s cocoon and for the young and young at heart we’ve created Curiosity Corner, where we’ll answer questions, set challenges and offer some DIY science entertainments for home. Finally, Jacinta Bowler looks at the challenges facing academics in Australia to explore the systemic barriers they face to continuing their research. The world changes, its way paved by those countless people and those countless hours. If this country squanders the ability to support its researchers, what do the rest of us stand to lose? GAIL MacCALLUM, IAN CONNELLAN & LAUREN FUGE contribute@cosmosmagazine.com
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THIN Y R VE WITH G
E TARTS S
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A global organisation working to rescue vegetable diversity neatly combines old and new techniques and technologies, reports Natalie Parletta.
AMARANTH (AMARANTHUS SPP.)
LEFT: MARILYNA/ GETTY IMAGES. RIGHT: WORLD VEGETABLE CENTER
SEED
VEGGIE VAULT
cosmosmagazine.com 47
CLIMATE MODELLING
BACKGROUND: YOTUYA, MATTHIAS KULKA / GETTY IMAGES. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MALORNY, DUKAI PHOTOGRAPHER, BILL ROSS, BAAC3NES, LETY LORENZO / 500PX / GETTY IMAGES.
PREDICTING THE
From modest beginnings, weather and climate models have come to dominate our days. Drew Rooke takes a tour across nearly two centuries to report on the scientists from a range of disciplines who have brought us to an extraordinary modelling moment.
FUTURE T
he computer screen radiates line after line of strange text: black letters, numbers and symbols on a light grey background. Scrolling through, it seems to be never-ending and – at least for me – mostly unintelligible; I’m not fluent in Fortran, the programming language it’s written in. But there’s a plain English preface to this gobbledegook text. “Many people have contributed to the development of this code,” it reads. “This is a collective effort and although individual contributions are appreciated, individual authorship is not indicated.” I’m visiting the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, and what I’m looking at is the backend of a modern-day climate model – specifically, the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM). This is just one of many models that scientists use nowadays to peer into Earth’s past and make projections about its future. For example: that our planet is likely to warm 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the “near-term” and that “every increment of global warming will
intensify multiple and concurrent hazards”, as the IPCC Sixth Assessment report says. Like many people, I strongly believe these projections. But my belief is based on little more than blind faith in the models that produce them. In fact, I know so little of the inner workings of climate modelling that it seems to me like something of a dark art – a form of planetary-scale fortune telling. The reason I’m here is to break the spell; to see for myself exactly what is behind the curtain of a contemporary climate model. My guide is Katrin Meissner, director of the CCRC and a professor at UNSW, who melds a brown bob, warm smile and more than 25 years’ experience in climate modelling. She first started developing models while completing her PhD in the mid-1990s at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, and initially “hated” the computer coding involved. Over time, it grew on her and she came to appreciate its beauty. “You have to use your brain to try to work out why things don’t work; it’s like a puzzle you have to solve,” she says. In 2000, Meissner accepted a postdoc position in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at cosmosmagazine.com 85