Science

The yellow submarine named Boaty McBoatface is set to leave for Antarctica this week on its first science expedition.

The robot is going to map the movement of deep waters that play a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate.

Boaty carries the name that a public poll had suggested be given to the UK’s future £200m polar research vessel.

The government felt this would be inappropriate and directed the humorous moniker go on a submersible instead.

But what many people may not realise is that there is actually more than one Boaty. The name covers a trio of vehicles in the new Autosub Long Range class of underwater robots developed at Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

These machines can all be configured slightly differently depending on the science tasks they are given.

The one that will initiate the adventures of Boaty will head out of Punta Arenas, Chile, on Friday aboard Britain’s current polar ship, the RRS James Clark Ross.

The JCR will drop the sub into a narrow, jagged, 3,500m-deep gap in an underwater ridge that extends northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Referred to as the Orkney Passage, this is the gateway into the Atlantic for much of the bottom-water that is created as sea-ice grows on the margins of the White Continent — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Planet Earth II, possibly the most lavish nature documentary ever made, has catapulted the images taken by fungi photographer Steve Axford from the forest floor to the world.

Axford started photographing rainforests around Lismore, on the NSW North Coast, about 10 years ago, and in retirement the hobby became an obsession.

The next step for Axford was to find a way to create time lapses of his fungi beauties showing the life cycles of the mushrooms.

I had a spare shower which I thought the fungus would grow quite well in so I could bring logs in and put them in the shower and the fungus could grow and I could take time lapse, Axford said.

Well I did that and it worked brilliantly and things have just grown from there.

Time lapse footage of Axford’s fungi photography have gone viral online, and people around the world started to notice that he was discovering plants never seen before.

One of them was a fungus which is now called a blue truffle.

It’s a completely new thing — never seen before — and he’s found that on the forest floor, Dr Tom May from the Herbarium of Victoria said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The British Government has chosen to name its now-famous polar research ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough, on the verge of the naturalist’s 90th birthday, in a snub to the popular choice, Boaty McBoatface.

In a media release and series of tweets, UK Science Minister Jo Johnson said that Boaty McBoatface will live on as the name of one of the high-tech remotely operated sub-sea vehicles — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A leading scientist has declared homeopathy a therapeutic dead-end after a systematic review concluded the controversial treatment was no more effective than placebo drugs.

Professor Paul Glasziou, a leading academic in evidence based medicine at Bond University, was the chair of a working party by the National Health and Medical Research Council which was tasked with reviewing the evidence of 176 trials of homeopathy to establish if the treatment is valid.

A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions — and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo on any.

Homeopathy is an alternative medicine based on the idea of diluting a substance in water. According to the NHS: Practitioners believe that the more a substance is diluted in this way, the greater its power to treat symptoms. Many homeopathic remedies consist of substances that have been diluted many times in water until there is none or almost none of the original substance left — via redwolf.newsvine.com