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ABC Listen. Hello, hello, hello, my friends.
My name is Ruby and you're listening to News Time.
Hey Ruby. Hello. It's National Science Week.
So, here on News Time, I'll be counting down five of the best science stories from around Australia and around the world.
What do gardens and robots have in common?
Or koalas and flying drones?
Well, you'll soon find out.
What do you reckon?
Let's do it. Story number five.
I once told you about a special dog here on News Time.
It's a robot. It's a robot dog.
I feel like flipped over, I'm pretty sure he can get back up.
I think it's from Boston Dynamics and it can do loads of things like jumping.
Yes, Spot the Robot Dog was designed by scientists in America.
And now engineers and scientists around the world are trying to teach this robot dog some new tricks.
I'll put a seat on it and ride it to school.
I'd be very excited to have a robot dog because I don't have a pet.
If it can run really fast it could follow you around like if you were skateboarding.
I use it to do all my chores.
Scientists at Texas A &M University have had a similar idea.
They've been thinking about one chore in particular that humans would love some help with.
Weeding. When weeds grow in the garden they can be hard to get rid of and they take important nutrients away from other plants.
That is where Spot the Robot Dog comes in.
These scientists have given the robot a mini blowtorch.
That would be scary burning all the weeds.
But he might accidentally burn your crops.
Don't worry, Spot isn't lighting things on fire.
Spot uses his torch to heat up the weeds from the inside.
It slows down their growing and makes it easier for other plants, the plants we want, to take over.
The only problem with Spot is its battery life.
Spot lasts about 40 minutes before he needs to be charged up again.
But the scientists are keen to keep working on it and hopefully share their invention with farmers around the world.
And remember, you should never use heat or fire for any sort of gardening at your home.
That's for robotic dogs only.
Story number four. Singing Stones Beach is on the south coast of New South Wales.
Its shoreline is covered with big round smooth pebbles rather than grainy sand.
I've been to that beach.
Definitely seen a beach like that before.
Can you guess why the beach is called Singing Stones Beach?
The rocks we like to do up, what?
Maybe secretly when no one's there or at night time they can sing underground.
Maybe because there's so many and they look like a choir.
Maybe when the waves hit the pebbles it sounds a lot different than when waves hit sand.
That's exactly right.
The pebbles come in a variety of colours and when the waves roll over them, they clink together in the wash and it sounds like beautiful music.
I love that sound. So that's where the beach gets its name, Singing Stones Beach.
But where did the beach get its stones?
It turns out they were carried from more than 300km away.
Maybe the rocks wanted to move houses.
Maybe. Scientists think these stones were formed near the snowy mountains and then carried up to the beach on a glacier that's an ice river.
Glaciers travelled slowly through the landscape, picking up rocks and dust as they went and carrying them to new places.
As glaciers reached the ocean, bits broke off into icebergs and rocks would be frozen with them.
Finally, when the iceberg melted, the rocks would be dropped back into the ocean.
This process is called ice rafting and its house stones, from kilometres away, ended up at this special beach.
It must have taken quite a long time because glaciers take thousands and thousands of years.
A very long time, which makes this beach extra special.
And it's why people travel from all over the world to listen to its gentle clinking song.
Story number three.
Beyond the edge of our atmosphere, that's the protective bubble around the Earth, there are lots of things floating and flying and hurtling through space.
There are planets and comets and stars and asteroids all moving around each other, almost like they're dancing.
We know it was probably an asteroid that smashed into Earth and killed all the dinosaurs and so scientists are wondering, what could we do to protect ourselves if another asteroid was headed our way?
We should get, like, a shield.
Or we could make the world's biggest trampoline.
We could get an even bigger rock than that asteroid and then we could smash it.
Maybe use a missile to destroy it.
I like the way you think.
Scientists at NASA had a similar idea, actually.
They've started something called the double asteroid redirection test, or DART.
The DART mission sent a spacecraft to smash into a little moon of a little asteroid far away from planet Earth.
They wanted to know what would happen if their rocket smashed into it and whether it would be steered off course.
If it could, maybe they could try the same method with an asteroid headed for Earth.
So they could test out and practise so we wouldn't become the dinosaurs and die.
The experiment was a success.
Scientists learnt much more than just whether or not they could do it.
They also learnt more about what this asteroid was made of and how it was formed, so our next experiments can go even better.
All we have to do is do this again and we know we won't die.
Mm -hm. It's not very likely that an asteroid will be headed our way any time soon, but we can rest easy knowing that even if one does, maybe scientists could nudge it away, no worries.
Story number two. Sitting high up in gum trees across our gorgeous continent, Australia, is our favourite little growler, the koala.
They're cute cuddly.
They're endangered, kind of.
The babies eat their mum's poop.
Correct on all counts.
On Mangeri Bard in Queensland, Indigenous rangers are combining cultural knowledge with modern technology to protect one of our most loved native animals.
Rangers from Kwan Damuka Yulabara, the Aboriginal corporation, have discovered they can help keep koalas safe by tracking their location using drones.
Drones are small, flying robotic devices that are operated using a controller.
Kind of like a remote -controlled car, but up in the sky.
They send the drone up, and then they fly around in, like, the bush.
Well, drones can go into places humans can't, and koalas also can.
You'd be able to have a look at the wild without going there.
Using drones to detect koalas high up in the trees is faster and more reliable than searching from the ground.
It also means the koalas don't get disturbed.
Rangers need to know where the koalas are living in order to protect them ahead of their planned cultural burns.
Where they burn a bit of an area so that if there is an actual fire there, then it doesn't burn as much.
They can kind of control the fire.
Yep, cultural burning is an important part of Aboriginal culture and knowledge.
It's a way of caring for country, a bit like giving the land a gentle clean -up.
Instead of big, hot fires that can harm the land, cultural burns are small fires that help by clearing away old leaves and helping plants and animals to grow.
Jaradolani, a Qandamooka traditional owner, says it's great to be combining traditional knowledge with cutting -edge drone tech.
It's helping them care for koalas and keep them happy, healthy and thriving.
And now it's time for...
Wow! The week! This story made me go wow because I never knew there could be an animal so big.
The Alkuta Scientific Reserve is a place near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory on Aliawa and Anmariya country.
The fossil beds at Alkuta are more than 8 million years old.
They have bones and fossils from back when Australia looked very different to the way it does today.
About 70 years ago, an Aboriginal man named Eterilkaka discovered an unusual bone in the area, sticking out of the ground.
Since then, traditional owners and scientists have worked together to explore the land.
They've found bones from more than 30 species of megafauna.
They're giant animals that roamed the land before humans were around.
Long ago, like, you could find, like, a giant wombat, like living in, like, a giant cave.
Yep, giant Dromorthanid birds, which were big, flightless animals that looked a little bit like emus, giant wombats and large kangaroos used to live in the area.
On this year's trip to Alkuta, scientists found a skeleton from an Ilbendornis woodburnae, one of the large, flightless birds that were common across Australia.
Cool. This bird would have weighed about 200 kilograms.
That's the same as a piano.
It had thick legs, tiny wings and a big beak.
They look pretty scary.
They look like the half horse, half toucan.
They kind of look like a potato.
That is very dangerous.
Studying the Alkuta fossil beds gives us a better idea of what Australia was like, thousands and even millions of years ago.
Scientists are keen to keep coming back to the area to find out more.
Cos you could dig out the bones and you could try and make it.
Like a giant, ancient, dusty, delicate jigsaw puzzle.
And there you have it, my friends.
Five science -tastic stories.
Happy Science Week.
Thank you. Thanks, Ruby.
You are very welcome.
And hey, don't forget to try the news time quiz.
The questions and the answers are in the description.
Bye, Ruby. Bye. See you later, or, as they say in Japanese, Sayonara.
