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ABC Listen. Hello there, my friends.
It's Ruby here and you're listening to Newstime.
Hey, Ruby. G'day, Ruby.
Tell me, would you wear a perfume made out of the stuff stuck at the bottom of your drain?
Well, on Newstime today, we're going to hear about a stinky substance being turned into a sweet smell.
Plus, we'll visit dizzying spinning stars and meet some clever kelpies.
What do you think? Are you ready?
Let's do it. Story number five.
In January every year, you might be lucky enough to hear the sound of fiery fiddles, heavenly harmonicas and brilliant banjos coming from northeast New South Wales.
That's the sound of the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
They usually play country music.
People wearing cowboy hats and people just have a good time.
yep the tamworth country music festival is big and it's pretty famous all around the world people come to listen to and celebrate country music and country life more broadly this year though country music won't be the only thing to listen to people are warming up their voices for a rooster crowing competition nice
work for two bucks per entry people of all ages can line up to see whether their bird call is the best you'd have to be pretty brave to stand on stage and crow to an audience don't you think no scaredy chickens allowed do you have any tips for our crowing competitors High -pitched voice and a cock -a -doodle
-doo. They make such a loud sound because they're probably, like, trying to wake people up and, like, calling to the other animals.
At the end of a week's worth of cock -a -doodle -doodling, the king or queen of the roosters is crowned.
Last year's winner was a talented local named Dot.
If you closed your eyes and listened to Dot crowing, you'd probably think there was actually a rooster in your lounge room.
Ah, ah! Ah! Wow, cool.
This year, competitors are going to have a tough time beating Dot, but win or lose, the money from the competition will go to charity, so it's all crowing for a good cause.
Ah, ah! Story number four.
When a supermassive star explodes and dies, what's left of it gets smooshed together to make something called a neutron star.
It looks like a planet spinning really fast, like shooting a laser out of it.
Neutron stars are one of the coolest things in outer space.
They're really dense, which means there's heaps of stuff packed into them, almost as much stuff as what's in a black hole.
Plus, neutron stars, they spin super fast, thousands of spins every second.
You would be moving all the time, so it'd sort of be a bit weird, but then you would kind of get used to it.
It would be very weird.
Not too long ago, Australian scientists figured out that there was a neutron star that didn't spin very fast at all.
ASKAPJ1839075 is a neutron star thousands of light years away that only spins once every six hours.
That is very strange neutron star behaviour and it means scientists have to change how they're thinking about the rules that neutron stars have Well I think they should like send astronauts up to space and then they can like walk on the neutron star and then see what it's like on it They should study
both of the neutron stars at the exact same time and see what the patterns are This out -of -this -world discovery was made almost by accident.
Scientists had chosen a random point of the sky to examine, hoping they might stumble across something extraordinary.
Even though this special star was discovered by an Australian, it's got people all over the world scratching their heads with wonder.
They think maybe this discovery means there could be heaps more of these strange, slow -spinning stars all across the universe, ready to be discovered by someone lucky enough to be looking in the right place at the right time.
Story number three.
When you wash your hands or your hair, rinse your dishes or do your laundry, little bits of fat and dirt and dust get washed down the drain.
Sometimes those grotty bits of dirt clump together And then they get bigger and bigger and bigger Until they turn into big gloopy globs called fatbergs A clump of ball of dirty nonsense I think that is gross That's probably why some of our drains smell so bad Fatbergs form when people flush things down the drain that they
shouldn't Things like wipes or paper towels They can block drains and sewers and sometimes they have to get fished out to clear up the pipes.
That's really gross and I wouldn't like to have that job.
Scientists in Britain have come up with a surprising use for these stinky globs.
They're turning them into perfume.
It's still a bit gross.
I would only use it if it sounded like roses.
No, I wouldn't use Fatberg perfume because it could be really stinky.
Special bacteria are used to eat up the fatbergs and break them down.
As the fatberg disappears, the bacteria creates a chemical with a fresh pine smell, a little bit like a car's air freshener.
This nice -smelling chemical can be used to make all kinds of perfumes, and there are already two perfume companies using it to make theirs.
I think that is amazing that we can use our general race to make something everybody loves.
Some people, when you explain how they do it, it's kind of, like, gross and I don't think they would really want to use it anymore.
The Fatberg fragrance is more sustainable.
It means that we're reusing something rather than using something new.
So it's kinder to our environment.
What do you think? Would you wear Fatberg perfume?
Would your nose know the difference?
Hmm. Story number two.
Being a farmer is hard work.
Taking care of a farm, that's a big job.
But thankfully, farmers often have help from a furry, four -legged friend.
I have heard of farm dogs.
They usually round up cattle for, like, farmers.
They help the farmers herd up cows and sheep.
They round up the animals and get them into the right spot.
But working dogs need to be trained before they can be sent to a farm.
I would train it by doing, like, tricks and then also, like, giving it treats if it does all the right things.
Right now, nine puppies with farm potential are being trained up for a program called Kelpies for Kids.
The Kelpie pups have a lot of work ahead of them.
Over the course of a few months, they get taught to listen to commands and be quick and clever and careful when they're rounding up farm animals.
Be really fast and listen to their owner when they're calling them.
They would have to have a very strong bark.
Once the Kelpies have learned everything they need to know, they will be auctioned off.
That means they're sold to whoever wants to pay the most for them.
The money that's raised goes to sick kids living in the country who might not have the same access to the same comforts as sick kids living in big cities do.
That's a good idea because then sick kids, they can buy all what they need to buy.
I think it's a great idea because families need support over their kids being sick.
Each Kelpie pup gets matched up with one kid and they get to keep track of the dog's progress over its months of training.
These kids love learning about working dogs, and the working dogs, they're pretty happy with the occasional visit too.
And now, my friends, it's time for...
Wow of the Week! This story made me go wow because I never knew what marsupial moles were.
Australia is home to oodles and oodles of weird and wonderful creatures Like the koala It looks cuddly but it growls like a monster Or the platypus It's got a bill like a duck but a tail like a beaver What's up with that?
An animal we know much less about is the Australian marsupial mole It is so small, it's the size of a finger Marsupial moles are a lovely golden colour.
They're tiny, about the length of a pencil, and their eyes are hidden behind their skin, so they can't really see.
We've talked about burrowing moles on Newstime before, but it turns out they're even more bizarre than we thought.
Known as itjarijari to the Indigenous Ananu people, marsupial moles are very hard to spot.
They live most of their lives underground, in deserts, and so scientists don't see them very often.
It makes them hard to study and a bit of a mystery.
Moles, you don't really see them and I think they more like to be hidden, so I think that would be a good lifestyle.
Researchers from the University of Melbourne worked out that these moles have a special way of getting oxygen to breathe, even though they spend most of their lives underground in sand and far away from fresh air.
They have more than the usual amount of stuff called haemoglobin.
That helps them use up little bits of oxygen that they can find in the sand.
They might, like, when they dig holes underground, maybe there's, like, fresh air that comes in and maybe they dig little holes.
They use the holes that they've already dug up to breathe.
They wouldn't have to worry about oxygen at all.
Because it's so hard to spot and study these moles, scientists want to remind people how important it is to care for our desert environment and all the animals in it, even if we can't see them.
And it's time to crawl out of our newsy burrow now because that is the end of this week's Countdown.
Thanks, Ruby. Thank you.
No worries. And hey, don't forget to try the Newstime quiz.
There's even a tricky bonus question.
It's all in the show notes.
Bye, Ruby. Bye. Catch you next time.
Bye. See you later.
Or, as they say in Javanese, parang.
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