Opinion

Australia now has its own grand mosque: a brief history of how these buildings fold into the urban landscape

09 May 2023

Grand mosques mark the urban space of major historical cities such as Mecca, Medina, Cordoba and Tunis. Now, Melbourne has its very own.

Friday essay: peyotes in suburbia – the secret world of Sydney’s psychoactive cacti growers

05 May 2023

They tend backyards brimming with cactus varieties, consuming the produce. Prudence Gibson meets a hidden group of gardeners and ponders the allure – and – danger of psychoactive plants.

Alone Australia contestants are grappling with isolation and setbacks. Here’s what makes a winner

04 May 2023

Is winning about mental toughness? How about coping with social isolation? Or will it be the one who’s in awe of a sunset?

In a bad fire year, Australia records over 450,000 hotspots. These maps show where the risks have increased over 20 years

04 May 2023

Two decades of satellite data have allowed us to map fires across the country and identify areas facing high fire risks.

Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone?

03 May 2023

Life relies on a fine balance between energy in and energy out. But heating the world 1.2℃ means we’ve trapped an extraordinary amount of extra energy in the Earth system.

The defence review fails to address the third revolution in warfare: artificial intelligence

01 May 2023

AI is going to fundamentally transform how nations wage far. By failing to address it, the defence review leaves Australia unprepared for the future of war.