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A CIVILIAN contract crew made two serious errors during sea trials for the navy’s biggest ever ship, damaging its hull and melting down electrical systems. The first of two $1.5 billion 27,000-tonne Landing Helicopter Docks (LHDs), to be known as HMAS Canberra, suffered excessive vibration in May during her first “shakedown cruise” between Melbourne and Sydney. The fault was traced to the brand-new vessel’s two German-built Siemens propulsion pods — or azimuth thrusters — which were out of alignment. Each thruster, fitted at the stern of the ship, has two propellers mounted on large electric powered pods that can be...

A Curtin University researcher has shown that ancient volcanic eruptions in Australia 510 million years ago significantly affected the climate, causing the first known mass extinction in the history of complex life. Published in prestigious journal Geology, Associate Professor Fred Jourdan from Curtin’s Department of Applied Geology, along with colleagues from several Australian and international institutions, used radioactive dating techniques to precisely measure the age of the eruptions of the Kalkarindji volcanic province – where lavas covered an area of more than 2 million square kilometres in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.Dr Jourdan and his team were able...

When Australian farmer Tony Knight first saw a purple-flowering plant growing across the bushfire-scarred terrain where his sheep grazed, his first thought was that it looked like “good stock feed.” However, the “pleasant-looking plant” was far from the nutritious food his livestock needed after their paddocks were razed bare by the fires that swept through the northwest region of New South Wales state last year. Instead, the native weed known as the “Darling pea” contained a toxin that affected the sheep’s nervous systems, killing hundreds by triggering mental and physical deterioration. “To start with, they will do quite well when...

Explanation: This clear night skyscape captures the colorful glow of aurora australis, the southern lights, just outside the port city of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, planet Earth. As if staring into the dreamlike scene, the Tasmanian Earth Resources Satellite Station poses in the center, illuminated by nearby city lights. Used to receive data from spacebased Earth observing instruments, including NASA's MODIS and SeaWiFS, the station was decommissioned in 2011 and dismantled only recently, shortly after the picture was taken on April 30. Still shining in southern skies though, the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy and two bright satellite galaxies...

The RAAF’s AGM-158A Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-Off Missile (JASSM) has achieved its Final Operational Capability (FOC), Minister for Defence, Senator David Johnston has announced. The weapon – which is built by Lockheed Martin and is also in use by the USAF – was acquired under Project AIR 5418 to give the RAAF’s classic Hornet fleet a 300km+ stand-off precision strike capability. “The Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-Off Missile is now fully in service and is an extremely capable, long range missile that meets the future requirements of Air Force,” Senator Johnston said in a statement. “Successful JASSM integration forms a key piece of...

THE notoriously long gestation period of a major military capability means considerable effort has already been directed at the so-called Future Frigate that will replace the RAN’s eight Anzac-class workhorses sometime in the next decade. Although the Sea 5000 program has yet to complete the ­requirements definition phase, there has been no shortage of ­debate on capability and construction issues within both Defence and industry — until recently. One-on-one discussions in Sydney last year between ­Defence’s Capability Development Group and major industry players were to have been followed by a strong Defence team visiting ship designers in Europe and possibly...

THERE are only a few companies in the Western world that have the capacity to successfully design and build conventional submarines. That number will soon increase by one, with a dramatic demerger of Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and Kockums of Sweden being played out in Europe. This has major implications for the Collins-class and SEA 1000 as both companies jostle to take advantage of their changed circumstances even before the dust has settled. While the European defence industry went through a phase of consolidation in the 1990s, this seldom extended into the naval domain and rarely across national boundaries. A...

Owners of iPhones and iPads have been targeted by a hacker who is freezing iOS devices and demanding a ransom of up to £55 to unlock them. ... "I went to check my phone and there was a message on the screen (it's still there) saying that my device(s) had been hacked by 'Oleg Pliss' and he/she/they demanded $100 USD/EUR (sent by paypal to lock404(at)hotmail.com) to return them to me. ... "Such scams have been around for years. By using the credentials to access an Apple iCloud account, the attackers can enable the 'Find My iPhone' service - this is...

“Owners of Apple devices across Australia are having them digitally held for ransom by hackers demanding payment before they will relinquish control,” Ben Grubb reports for Fairfax Media. “iPad, iPhone and Mac owners in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria have reported having their devices held hostage.” “One iPhone user, a Fairfax Media employee in Sydney, said she was awoken at 4am on Tuesday to a loud ‘lost phone’ message that said ‘Oleg Pliss’ had hacked her phone. She was instructed to send $50 to a PayPal account to have it unlocked,” Grubb reports. “It is likely hackers...

A long-standing Australian senator on Monday brought what he said could be a pipe bomb to the national parliament to demonstrate his view that new security regulations are unsafe. Senator Bill Heffernan, a member of the ruling conservative Liberal Party, held up the pipe and what appeared to be some sticks of dynamite during a committee hearing in Canberra. "Clearly you can do what you bloody well like," said Heffernan, an outspoken former farmer who became a member of the national parliament in 1996.

A unique “Peace Run” initiated by an Australian extreme athlete to promote coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Judea and Samaria was dealt a severe blow Sunday after the Palestinian Authority objected to the presence of Jewish runners. A group of six Israelis were asked to refrain from participating in Australian ultra marathon runner Pat Farmer’s Peace Run, as it passed the Jewish communities of Eli and Shiloh in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. The group—which was organized by the Yesha Council in conjunction with Regavim—had coordinated with Farmer’s team ahead of time to ensure that Jews and Palestinians could run...

The fallout from the new government’s budget is still being seen in Australia, but it is already obvious that climate change is a loser when it comes to funding. The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years.

Who has the data investigators used to shape their search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and why hasn't it been released to the public? The answer to those questions depends on who you ask. Facing a growing chorus of criticism from scientists and family members who want to see more details about why searchers are combing the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysia's top transportation official Thursday claimed his country doesn't have the raw data from the satellite's communication with the plane ... The data is crucial because it's what led investigators to the area where they're currently searching for the plane....

When Bill de Blasio released his budget for New York last Thursday, he made clear his approach for the next few years: more government, more spending and more borrowing against tomorrow to pay for today. Meanwhile in Australia, the new Tony Abbott government has taken the opposite approach. Treasurer Joe Hockey’s budget is based on the idea that governments, like families, need to live within their means. As he put it Wednesday: “The days of borrow and spend must come to an end.” In practical terms, that means layoffs for 16,500 government workers. It means cuts in entitlements, cuts in...

Try to imagine a commission of the U.S. government recommending that it get rid of the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, countless agencies, and, for good measure, restructure Medicare so it doesn’t go broke. There are few Americans who will argue that our federal government isn’t big enough and many who trace our present problems to Big Government. That is why what has been occurring in Australia caught my attention because its voters rid themselves of a political party that imposed both a carbon tax and renewable energy tax on them. The purpose of the...

Exploding feral pest numbers across the region aren't just keeping graziers busy. At Boolcoomatta Reserve, which is 100 kilometres west of Broken Hill, native animals are being targeted. Set on 63,000 hectares, Boolcoomatta was once a thriving sheep station in its hey day, but is now a nature reserve protecting endangered plants and animals. Property manager Glen Norris says as conditions remain dry, feral cats are becoming a big problem.

Explanation: In skies over Brisbane at the southeastern corner of Queensland, Australia, Planet Earth, the Sun and New Moon set together on April 29. There the celestial line-up, the first solar eclipse of 2014, was seen as a partial solar eclipse. This dramatic composite is a digital stack of images taken about 5 minutes apart with telephoto lens and solar filter. It follows the eclipse in progress, approaching a western horizon where crepuscular rays from cloud banks in silhouette joined the silhouetted Moon. From Brisbane, the maximum eclipse phase with the Moon covering about 25% of the Sun occurred just...

Explanation: If you look closely, you will see something quite unusual about this setting Sun. There are birds flying to the Sun's left, but that's not so unusual. A dark sea covers the Sun's bottom, and dark clouds cover parts of the middle, but they are also not very unusual. More unusual is the occulted piece at the top right. And that's no occulting cloud -- that's the Moon. Yesterday the Moon moved in front of part of the Sun as visible from Australia, and although many locations reported annoying clouds, a partially eclipsed Sun would occasionally peek through as...

Lockheed’s strategy of basing its F-35 marketing strategy on its “stealth” capabilities is beginning to backfire as their effectiveness is being increasingly challenged by competitors and outside analysts. (RAAF photo) Boeing has been loudly criticising Lockheed Martin’s F-35 in hopes that the Navy and other clients will buy more of its EA-18G Growlers for support and F/A-18 Super Hornets as contingency. Developed in a Joint Strike Fighter contract that Lockheed won over Boeing in 2001, the F-35 is wildly over budget and has run into various design problems. Chief among them, according to Boeing, is the weakness of its stealth...

A private company declared that it has found what it believes is wreckage of a plane in the ocean, but leaders of the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are dismissing the claim. The reasons for the skepticism are obvious -- the site where GeoResonance says it found the wreckage, in the Bay of Bengal, is several thousand miles away from the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean. The Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is coordinating the multinational search, dismissed the claim. "The Australian-led search is relying on information from satellite and other data to determine...