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Curtin University researchers and international collaborators using advanced satellite imagery have discovered an ancient reef-like landform "hidden" in plain view on the Nullarbor Plain, which has been preserved for millions of years since it first formed when the Plain was underwater. Research author Dr. Milo Barham, from the Timescales of Mineral Systems Group within Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the finding further challenged the understanding that the Nullarbor Plain, which emerged from the ocean about 14 million years ago, was essentially flat and featureless. "Unlike many parts of the world, large areas of the Nullarbor Plain have...

Powerful, radio-wavelength laser light has been detected emanating from the greatest distance across deep space yet. It's a type of massless cosmic object called a megamaser, and its light has traveled for a jaw-dropping 5 billion light-years to reach us here on Earth. The astronomers who discovered it using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have named it Nkalakatha – an isiZulu word meaning "big boss". The discovery has been accepted into The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available on preprint server arXiv. "It's impressive that, with just a single night of observations, we've already found a record-breaking megamaser,"...

Geologists matching rocks from opposite sides of the globe have found that part of Australia was once attached to North America 1.7 billion years ago. Researchers from Curtin University in Australia examinedrocks from the Georgetown region of northern Queensland. The rocks — sandstone sedimentary rocks that formed in a shallow sea — had signatures that were unknownin Australia but strongly resembled rocks that can be seen in present-day Canada. The researchers, who described their findings online Jan. 17 in the journal Geology, concluded that the Georgetown area broke away from North America 1.7 billion years ago. Then, 100 million years...