Thousands of Year 12 students across Australia are getting ready to sit their final exams.

Students may be feeling a lot of things right now – from heightened pressure to excitement it will all be over soon. Families may be seeking strategies to help their young people to feel confident and stay calm.

Here are some research-backed strategies to help.

Reframe the narrative

Students, schools and the media often talk about Year 12 exams as the culmination of schooling. This may not be helpful to everyone, as not everyone will receive the results they want.

Stress tends to increase throughout the final year of school.

Although a moderate level of stress is normal, and some pressure may even be useful, too much worry about exams can affect performance and overall wellbeing.

Remember, one exam is not the whole story of your ATAR or your future.

It is healthier to think about the bigger picture. Education isn’t just about exams. They are one part of a bigger journey that includes the relationships you’ve formed with peers and teachers, all the things you learned and all the experiences you’ve had.

Students have already achieved a great deal in 13 years of school – regardless of what happens in their exams or ATAR.

What is ‘success’?

In our 2021 study, colleagues and I looked at how different ideas of “success” relate to young people’s wellbeing.

A review of existing studies suggests teenagers who focus on their connections to others and their personal growth may have greater wellbeing than those who focus on “extrinsic” goals or external approval.

Families can help students by emphasising the importance of life beyond the classroom.

You’ve got options!

Keep in mind, your future does not hinge on this result.

There are more alternative pathways into university or further study than ever before. This can include going to TAFE or non-ATAR entry schemes for university.

Reminding yourself – or your child – about these options may help to reduce stress.

Have a clear plan for your exams

As you near the end of your study revision period, think about your plan for certain exams.

You will likely already have done practice exams and revision questions, so you know what format to expect.

Remind yourself when you get into the exam room to take your time to read the instructions carefully and be aware of sections where there is a choice. Pay attention to the weighting of questions as this can help you to plan the time well.

And remind yourself to stop and understand the “command terms”. These are words that tell you what to do in a question, like “analyse”, “compare” or “discuss”.

What if something goes wrong?

You may come out of an exam feeling like you didn’t do your best or something didn’t go to plan. This is very common!

So having a strategy to manage when things do not go well can be important –especially when the setbacks happen early in the exam schedule.

Research tells us planning and persistence are key components of “academic buoyancy”, or students’ resilience in the face of a setback.

This means you should revisit your plan for the next exam, whether it is tomorrow or next week. Plan your timing and approach. Look at any feedback you received on the practice exams, or advice you have received from teachers. Feeling prepared for the next exam will increase your confidence.

Remember, resilience is not just an individual trait: it comes from relationships and contexts too.

You don’t have to handle setbacks alone. In fact, it’s better if you ask for help.

Talking with a trusted friend, teacher, family member or counsellor can put things into perspective or help reframe your approach for the next exam.

Keep some balance in your life

In among your revision and preparation, don’t forget to look after your health.

Get plenty of sleep, eat well, take breaks and spend time in nature – these will all help you maintain focus and wellbeing.

Kylie Trask-Kerr, Senior lecturer, School of Education, Australian Catholic University and Steven Lewis, Associate Professor of Education Policy, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Advice about cutting down on dopamine is everywhere right now. From “dopamine fasting” to “anti-dopamine parenting” and even “raw-dogging” flights (going without any screens, books or music), TikTok influencers claim these practices have rewired their brains.

Modern life constantly bombards our brains with stimulation, through scrolling feeds, video games, email pings and sugary snacks. This keeps dopamine – the neurotransmitter linked to reward and motivation – in steady circulation.

Over time, this constant activation can leave us desensitised, chasing even more stimulation just to feel “normal”. Everyday life begins to seem bland by comparison.

So it’s no surprise people have tried to come up with ways to reset their dopamine and change their behaviour. But do these strategies actually work?

Can you actually detox from dopamine?

No, you can never actually “detox” from dopamine itself. A detox involves eliminating a chemical from your body. If you go through an alcohol detox, for example, you stop drinking and allow your body to rid itself of alcohol-related toxins.

In the context of dopamine, a detox is impossible. Dopamine is naturally occurring and plays a significant role in various aspects of human physiology. It’s involved in the pleasure and reward centre of the brain, as well as in motivation, movement, arousal and sleep.

If we were to completely detox from dopamine, we wouldn’t be able to function, let alone stay alive.

“Dopamine detoxes” have involved people intentionally avoiding behaviours or substances that trigger quick bursts of dopamine, such as gaming, social media, sugary foods or online shopping. These “pleasure detoxes” usually occur over a short, set period of time: around 24 hours.

A 24-hour dopamine detox might feel hard and like something significant is happening. People report uncomfortable urges, cravings and sometimes even feelings of fatigue, anxiety or irritability during the process. The discomfort can lead some to believe that they are successfully “resetting” their brains.

While a dopamine detox may feel intense, most people won’t experience any meaningful, lasting improvements by abstaining for a day or two. Dopamine regulation is a complex process influenced by many factors, and it doesn’t undergo a sudden reset in a short 24-hour period.

Research suggests that after the period of abstinence, old habits and urges often return, unless people actively build new routines and coping strategies that engage healthier reward pathways.

So what can you do instead?

If you want to change your relationship with dopamine-driven behaviours or substances, be prepared for this to take longer that 24 hours.

Substituting “fast dopamine” rewards with “slow dopamine” activities can gradually restore the brain’s sensitivity to pleasure and help life feel rich again.

This might involve returning to activities that naturally require more patience and effort, such as creative projects, exercising or learning something new.

But it can also include other pleasurable experiences, such as connecting with someone face-to-face, or listening to music you love.

These activities can activate dopamine pathways, as well as the release of other neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and serotonin, which contribute to a positive mood.

The popularity of dopamine detoxes reflects a desire to feel better, regain motivation and reconnect with pleasures in a world overloaded by stimulation. But there’s no reset button for the brain’s dopamine system. Luckily, we can switch to longer-term rewards from movement, music, connection and stretching ourselves in other ways.

Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer and Research Supervisor, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The hope of the world wide web, according to its creator Tim Berners-Lee, was that it would make communication easier, bring knowledge to all, and strengthen democracy and connection. Instead, it seems to be driving us apart into increasingly small and angry splinter groups. Why?

We have commonly blamed online echo chambers, digital spaces filled with people who largely share the same beliefs – or filter bubbles, the idea that algorithms tend to show us content we are likely to agree with.

However, these concepts have both been challenged by a number of studies. A 2022 study led by one of us (Dana), which tracked the social media behaviours of ten respondents, found people often engage with content they disagree with – even going so far as to seek it out.

When an individual engages with a disagreeable post on social media – whether it’s “rage bait” or something else that offends you – it drives income for the platform. But on a societal scale, it drives antisocial outcomes.

One of the worst of these outcomes is “affective polarisation”, where we like people who think similarly to us, and dislike or resent people who hold different views. Research and global surveys both show this form of polarisation is growing across the world.

Changing the economics of social media platforms would likely reduce online polarisation. But this won’t be possible without intervention from governments, and each of us.

How our views get reinforced online

Social media use has been associated with growing affective polarisation.

Online, we can be influenced by the opinions of people we agree or disagree with – even on topics we had previously been neutral towards. For instance, if there’s an influencer you admire, and they express a view on a new law you hadn’t thought much about, you’re more likely to adopt their viewpoint on it.

When this happens on a large scale, it gradually separates us into ideological tribes that disagree on multiple issues: a phenomenon known as “partisan sorting”.

Research shows our encounters on social media can lead to us developing new views on a topic. It also shows how any searches we do to get more insight can solidify these emerging views, as the results are likely to contain the same language as the original post that gave us the view in the first place.

For example, if you see a post that inaccurately claims taking paracetamol during pregnancy will give your baby autism, and you search for other posts using the key words “paracetamol pregnancy autism”, you will probably get more of the same.

Being in a heightened emotional state has been linked to higher susceptibility to believing false or “fake” content.

Why are we fed polarising content?

This is where the economics of the internet come in. Divisive and emotionally laden posts are more likely to get engagement (such as likes, shares and comments), especially from people who strongly agree or disagree, and from provocateurs. Platforms will then show these posts to more people, and the cycle of engagement continues.

Social media companies leverage our tendency towards divisive content to drive engagement, as this leads to more advertising money for them. According to a 2021 report from the Washington Post, Facebook’s ranking algorithm once treated emoji reactions (including anger) as five times more valuable than “likes”.

Simulation-based studies have also revealed how anger and division drive online engagement. One simulation (in a yet to be peer-reviewed paper) used bots to show that any platform measuring its success and income by engagement (currently all of them) would be most successful if it boosted divisive posts.

Where are we headed?

That said, the current state of social media need not also be its future.

People are now spending less time on social media than they used to. According to a recent report from the Financial Times, time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has since been declining. By the end of 2024, users aged 16 and older spent 10% less time on social platforms than they did in 2022.

Droves of users are also leaving bigger “mainstream” platforms for ones that reflect their own political leanings, such as the left-wing BlueSky, or the right-wing Truth Social. While this may not help with polarisation, it signals many people are no longer satisfied with the social media status quo.

Internet-fuelled polarisation has also resulted in real costs to government, both in mental health and police spending. Consider recent events in Australia, where online hate and misinformation have played a role in neo-Nazi marches, and the cancellation of events run by the LGBTQIA+ community, due to threats.

For those of us who remain on social media platforms, we can individually work to change the status quo. Research shows greater tolerance for different views among online users can slow down polarisation. We can also give social media companies less signals to work from, by not re-sharing or promoting content that’s likely to make others irate.

Fundamentally, though, this is a structural problem. Fixing it will mean reframing the economics of online activity to increase the potential for balanced and respectful conversations, and decrease the reward for producing and/or engaging with rage bait. And this will almost certainly require government intervention.

When other products have caused harm, governments have regulated them and taxed the companies responsible. Social media platforms can also be regulated and taxed. It may be hard, but not impossible. And it’s worth doing if we want a world where we’re not all one opinion away from becoming an outcast.

George Buchanan, Deputy Dean, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University and Dana McKay, Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The iconic feathered showgirl was born amid the chaos of the first world war, when the wealthy, global French superstar Gaby Deslys entertained Parisians and Allied soldiers in a 1917 show called Laissez-les tombe! (Let Them Fall), a dazzling spectacle of ostrich feathers, rhinestones and beauty.

Although showgirls first appeared in late-19th century music halls, the red, white and blue feathered costumes in Deslys’ revue offered Paris something new and triumphal. The massed plumes, wild dancing and bodily displays celebrated French aesthetics and extravagance and communicated that France and her allies would not bow to Germany.

Prior to 1914 Deslys’s expensive jewellery, haute couture and expansive feathered hats – along with her affairs with powerful men such as department store magnate Harry Selfridge and King Manuel II of Portugal – created countless headlines.

But she was also outspoken about a woman’s right to support herself financially and worked tirelessly during the war raising funds for the Allies. Deslys was so passionate about aiding the devastated Parisian nightlife that she paid for all the costumes in Laissez-les tombe! herself.

Deslys’s cultural impact has inextricably linked feathers, high fashion, celebrity and showgirls ever since.

From France to Broadway

Feathered showgirl revues were so popular that they quickly went global. In 1920s New York, impresarios such as Florenz Ziegfeld staged luxurious Broadway productions that glorified the American showgirl.

But he made exceptions to American women. One of Ziegfeld’s most famous showgirls, Dolores, was born into poverty in London’s East End as Kathleen Mary Rose. She rose to become a supermodel who walked for the couturier Lady Duff-Gordon, known professionally as Lucile.

Ziegfeld considered Dolores one of the world’s most beautiful women. Tall, slender and graceful, she drove audiences wild when she glided across Ziegfeld’s stage and posed in opulent costumes.

On becoming a showgirl, Dolores used her modelling ability to make her fortune, earning today’s equivalent of US$10,000 a week by 1923.

Other performers harnessed the feathered showgirl aesthetic, including the celebrated twins Jenny and Rosie Dolly, who came from humble origins and used their beauty, talent and hard work to dominate American and European stages in the 1910s and 1920s.

Ziegfeld paid the Dollys the equivalent of US$64,000 weekly in 1915. Like Deslys, they became notorious for their consumption of fashion and affairs with famous men.

However, stage revues became unpopular around 1930 due to their vast expense and the rise of cinema – so the showgirl travelled to Hollywood.

There, she was celebrated in biopics such as The Great Ziegfeld (1936) with its glittering, feathered costumes by the designer Adrian.

In the second world war, showgirls boosted troop morale, like Deslys did in 1917.

Hollywood made feel-good films including the biopic The Dolly Sisters (1945), which reimagined the brunette twins as all-American blondes by casting 1940s pinup stars Betty Grable and June Haver.

From Hollywood to Vegas

From there, the American showgirl arrived in Las Vegas, performing in every hotel and casino on the strip during the 1950s and 1960s.

Like the showgirls of yore, these performers’ allure was their grace, beauty, and extravagant, expensive costumes, produced by the world’s leading designers.

Showgirls remained a fixture of Las Vegas entertainment throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Choreographers including Donn Arden and Madame Bluebell (who also worked in the Parisian revues) created hallmark, visual spectacles featuring costumes by Bob Mackie.

Jubilee!, which opened at the old MGM Grand casino in 1981, was one such revue. In addition to the vast volume of plumes, it was claimed the show had caused a global shortage of Swarovski crystals because the costumes had used them all.

In 1986 the old MGM Grand became Bally’s Casino, but Jubilee! stayed. The costumes, some of which cost more than US$7,000 each (roughly US$25,000 today), were used six nights a year for 35 years and maintained by 18 wardrobe staffers.

Jubilee! closed in 2016, but its costumes live on as valuable cultural artefacts that celebrities borrow to reinterpret the American showgirl for 21st-century audiences.

This includes demonstrating that showgirls are independent, hardworking and talented women.

From Vegas to Taylor Swift

Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese draws on the American showgirls’ legacy by wearing costumes from Jubilee! in her Las Vegas cabaret, and called the 1945 Dolly Sisters film one of her inspirations.

Pamela Anderson wore Jubilee! costumes in The Last Showgirl (2024), a film that highlights the sacrifices female performers often have to make to pursue their dreams.

Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to harness showgirl iconography. Photographs from her new album show Swift wearing the Jubilee! “Diamond” and “Disco” costumes by Mackie.

Another photograph shows Swift in a cloud of ostrich plumes and rhinestones wearing a dark, bobbed wig: a direct reference to 1920s American showgirls and performers such as the Dolly Sisters.

Swift’s stage costumes are by the world’s leading fashion designers, while her songs often reference historical celebrities to critique how the entertainment and media industry treat female performers.

Choosing Mackie’s Jubilee! costumes allows Swift to become the American showgirl (Taylor’s Version), by tapping into a century of glamour and signalling that she too has worked hard and made sacrifices to reach the top.

Emily Brayshaw, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you have studied almost any European language, you will have noticed words that felt oddly familiar. French mort (dead) recalls English murder. German Hund (dog) is a dead ringer for hound. Czech sestra resembles English sister. No prizes for guessing the meaning of Albanian kau (OK, well – it’s actually ox).

You might have wondered: could these words be in some way related?

Of course, words can look similar for various reasons. Unrelated languages borrow from one another: consider English igloo, from Inuktikut iglu (house), or wok from Cantonese 鑊 wòk (frying pan). And there are plenty of sheer coincidences: Thai ไฟ fai resembles its English translation fire for no particular reason at all.

But the preceding sets of words actually are related to one another. They are cognate, which means they share a common origin in descent from a single ancestral language.

This now-extinct tongue was probably spoken somewhere in Eurasia as many as 8,000 years ago. Long predating the advent of writing systems, its words – and its name, if it had one – were never written down. Lacking such direct knowledge, linguists have therefore developed methods for reconstructing aspects of its structure, and refer to it using the label Proto-Indo-European – or PIE.

But how do we know Proto-Indo-European must have existed?

Shared ancestry of language

Our modern-day awareness of the shared ancestry of Indo-European languages first took shape in the Renaissance and early colonial periods.

India-based European scholars such as Gaston Coeurdoux and William Jones were already familiar with the ties among European languages.

But they were astonished to find echoes of Latin, Greek and German in Sanskrit words such as mā́tṛ (mother), bhrā́tṛ (brother) and dúhitṛ (daughter).

Such words could not plausibly be borrowings, given these languages’ lack of historical contact. Sheer coincidence was obviously out of the question.

Even more striking was the systematic nature of the correspondences. Sanskrit bh- matched Germanic b- not only in bhrā́tṛ (brother) but also in bhar (bear). Meanwhile, Sanskrit p- aligned with Latin and Greek p-, but with Germanic f-.

There could be only one explanation for such regular correspondences. The languages must have descended from a single common ancestor, whose ancient breakup led to their distinct evolutionary pathways.

Philologists from the 19th century, such as Rasmus Rask, Franz Bopp and August Schleicher, later systematised these observations. They showed that, by comparing and reverse-engineering the changes each descendant language’s words had undergone, the words of the lost ancestral language could be reconstructed.

These insights not only laid the foundations of modern-day historical linguistics, but also went on to influence Darwin’s conception of biological evolution.

Forming a family

Like a biological genus, the Indo-European languages became understood as forming a family. At their root was the PIE ancestor, while the descendant languages branched out (like species) to form a tree.

The Indo-European family includes Indo-Aryan languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi; Iranian languages (including Persian and Kurdish); Hellenic (including Greek and Ancient Macedonian); Italic (including Latin, Spanish and Italian); Germanic (including English, Dutch and German); Balto-Slavic (including Russian and Lithuanian) and Celtic languages (including Welsh and Breton), as well as Armenian and Albanian.

Extinct branches – attested only through written records – include Anatolian (Hittite) and Tocharian. Languages like Phrygian, Dardanian and Thracian seem likely to have been Indo-European, but are not as well attested in historical records.

But not all Indian or European languages are Indo-European!

Non-Indo-European languages of India include Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Telugu, while European languages outside the family include Basque, Georgian, Maltese and Finnish. Compare with the above table the quite different Finnish words jalka (foot), isä (father) and viisi (five).

Learning about those who spoke PIE

Reconstructed PIE vocabulary has also yielded insights into the lives of its speakers: what their culture may have been like, where they might have lived, and what may have fuelled their language’s diversification and expansion.

Roots such as *rēg-, (tribal) king, and *pelə-, fortified high place, suggest a martial, hierarchical society.

Speakers knew grain agriculture (*agro, field; *grə-no, grain), animal domestication (*ghaido, goat; *gwou, cattle), vehicular transport (*wogh-no, wagon; *aks-lo, axle), metalworking (*arg-, shine or silver; *ajes, copper or bronze), trade (*wes-no buy; *k(a)mb-yo, exchange) and religion (*deiw-os, god; *meldh, pray).

From such evidence, scholars such as V. Gordon Childe linked Proto-Indo-European to the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Kurgan culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe (today’s Ukraine and southern Russia).

More recent studies have (somewhat controversially) employed phylogenetic methods derived from evolutionary biology to argue for a PIE origin in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), suggesting that agriculture was most probably the engine of Indo-European expansion.

Alas, spoken languages do not fossilise well. The actual words, ideas and identities of Proto-Indo-European speakers vanished into the air many millennia ago.

Yet patterns in their descendant languages preserve enough structure to enable us to manage at least a shadowy glimpse of them. The theories and methods pioneered through this work will continue to fuel research into the reconstruction of human ethnolinguistic prehistories worldwide for many years to come.

Mark W. Post, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the weather starts to warm in Australia, you might notice the pleasant flutter of butterflies in your garden during the day. And perhaps if you’ve left a porch light on during the night, you will see a flurry of moths have gathered around it.

To an untrained eye, these fluttering insects can seem similar. And indeed, both are from the order of insects called Lepidoptera, which roughly translates to “scaly wings”. That’s because the wings of butterflies and moths are covered in microscopic scales. These scales are important for providing these insects with their beautiful colours, and they’re the cause of the “dust” that often comes off moths when handled or found in the back of a pantry.

But there are some key differences between these two kinds of creatures. So what makes a moth a moth and a butterfly a butterfly?

What is a moth?

When we think about moths, we’re often thinking about little, brown, (definitely not) boring insects in our pantries, and flying around our porch lights. However, there is so much variation in this group of insects, given there are about 22,000 species in Australia.

Moths generally have straight antennae. But if they’re males, their antennae are often fluffy and feather-like. These fluffy antennae are used to help them find mates from large distances.

Most moths are nocturnal, preferring to fly at night. And many flowers are adapted to be pollinated by night-flying insects such as moths. Dragonfruit, for example, benefit from pollination by moths and the flowers bloom at night.

Because they fly at night, moths can’t use the same visual cues, such as sunlight, that butterflies use to navigate. Instead, they use a range of non-visual cues to know where they are in the dark. For example, Australian bogong moths, which can travel up to 1,000 kilometres during their migrations, are known to use magnetic fields and stars to navigate.

Many moths are excellent at camouflage. Historically, there have been stories surrounding how peppered moths became darker due to the industrial revolution, but there are much more impressive moths! For example, moths from the genus Eudocima manage to look like a curled leaf with completely flat wings. Bee hawk-moths can trick us into thinking they’re bees.

Due to the significant amount of time they spend camouflaging and travelling at night, there’s less value to moths to be extremely colourful. So many moth species are duller in colour than their flamboyant cousins, the butterflies.

They’re also less hungry. Generally speaking, lepidopterans have a long coiled mouthpart to help them feed on nectar (and sometimes other things, including corpses).

However, many moths spend so much time feeding as caterpillars, that as adult moths they don’t have mouthparts. They live short adult lives that include mating and starving to death.

What is a butterfly?

Butterflies are the charismatic, popular members of the insect world, and with good reason. They come in a range of colours, and can be large and relatively easy to see. However, there are a lot less butterflies in Australia compared to moths, approximately 450 species.

So what makes a butterfly a butterfly?

The main factor that determines a butterfly is its clubbed antennae. Unlike those of moths, butterfly antennae consist of a long thread with a bead at the end. However, this can be pretty hard to see while they are fluttering around!

Butterflies are also day flying. This drastically changes how they look and behave in comparison to moths. Butterflies come in a range of bright and beautiful colours because they can be seen during the day.

Some butterflies are colourful simply to attract mates. Some, such as monarch butterflies, have aposematic displays, which aim to warn off predators by advertising the butterfly’s potential to be poisonous. Others, such as European swallowtails use deimatic displays, aimed to startle predators by imitating something scary like a face.

There are also examples of caterpillars that mimic bird poo, but that’s less of a defining factor.

There are always exceptions to the rules

We can’t talk about moths without discussing some of the species that don’t necessarily follow all the rules. There are many brightly coloured moths, including the Madagascan sunset moth and the heliotrope moth.

To make things more confusing there are also groups of moths that have hardly any scales on their wings, including clearwing moths.

Not all moths fly around at night, either. Tiger moths, for example, are frequently seen flying during the daytime, and are brightly coloured.

So sometimes, it can be really hard to determine where the line is between a moth and a butterfly.

How can we help moths and butterflies?

Our fluttering insects face many threats, including pesticide use, climate change and habitat loss. Planting a range of flowers in your garden can help provide food and habitat for moths and butterflies.

You can also get involved in citizen science, by uploading sightings of insects you see on apps like iNaturalist. If you’re interested in learning more about the grand travel of bogong moths, take photos of ones you see and upload them to Bogong Watch.

Caitlyn Forster, Associate Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia’s most extraordinary fossil sites – McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today’s familiar plants and animals evolved.

It is here that palaentologists and geologists from the Australian Museum Research Institute have made remarkable fossil discoveries. Where dust and drought now dominate, a lush rainforest once flourished. In stunning ecological detail, fossils at McGraths Flat reveal this ancient ecosystem.

Strikingly red in appearance, the sedimentary rocks here are composed entirely of goethite – a fine-grained mineral that contains iron. This iron has preserved a range of plants, insects, spiders, fish and feathers with exceptional detail.

Our new study, published in the journal Gondwana Research, shows there’s another reason these rocks are so intriguing. They fundamentally challenge ideas about where well-preserved fossil sites on Earth can be found, and why.

Beyond shale and sandstone

Traditionally, the most exceptionally well-preserved fossil sites are from rocks dominated by shale, sandstone, limestone, or volcanic ash.

Consider Germany’s Messel Pit or Canada’s Burgess Shale. At these sites, organisms were rapidly buried in fine-grained sediments, allowing the exceptional preservation of soft tissues, not just hard parts.

Messel Pit has preserved roughly 47 million-year-old fossils showing the outlines of feathers, fur and skin. Meanwhile, the Burgess Shale contains soft tissues from some of Earth’s earliest animal life, dating back about 500 million years.

By contrast, sedimentary rocks made entirely of iron are the last place you’d expect to find well-preserved remains of land-based (terrestrial) animal and plant life.

That’s because iron-rich sedimentary rocks are predominantly known from banded iron formations. These massive iron deposits largely formed around 2.5 billion years ago in Earth’s ancient oxygen-depleted oceans, long before complex animal and plant life evolved.

In more recent history, iron is considered a mere weathering product, forming rust on the continents when exposed to our oxygen-rich atmosphere. Just look at Australia’s iconic red-rocked outback landscape that preserves these million- to billion-year-old features.

Yet the discovery of McGraths Flat has defied these expectations.

Terrestrial life entombed in iron

McGraths Flat is made from a very fine-grained, iron-rich rock called ferricrete. It’s essentially a cement made from iron.

The ferricrete consists almost entirely of microscopic iron-oxyhydroxide mineral particles, each just 0.005 millimetres across. When an animal died and was buried in the sediment, this minute scale is what allowed the iron particles to fill every cell. The result? Extraordinarily well-preserved soft tissue fossils.

Compared with marine life, fossil sites preserving terrestrial life are notoriously rare. Terrestrial sites that preserve soft tissues? Even rarer. The exceptional detail captured in the McGraths Flat fossils reveals new snapshots of past life we don’t often get to find.

These fossils are so perfectly preserved that individual pigment cells in fish eyes, internal organs of insects and fish, and even delicate spider hairs and nerve cells can be seen.

This level of preservation rivals other well-preserved fossil sites, such as those consisting of shale or sandstone. Except here, they are entombed in iron.

How did McGraths Flat form?

Our new study sheds light on how this fossil site came to be – a crucial step for finding similar terrestrial fossil troves in iron.

McGraths Flat began forming during the Miocene when iron leached from weathering basalt under warm, wet rainforest conditions.

Acidic groundwater then carried the dissolved iron underground until it reached a river system with an oxbow lake – an abandoned river channel. There, the iron became ultra-fine iron-oxyhydroxide sediment.

It rapidly coated dead organisms on the lake floor and replicated their soft tissue structures down to the cellular level.

A new fossil roadmap

Understanding how McGraths Flat formed could provide a roadmap for finding similar iron-rich fossil sites worldwide.

Key features to look for include very fine-grained and finely layered ferricrete in areas where:

• ancient river channels cut through older iron-rich landscapes, such as basaltic rocks from volcanoes

• ancient warm, humid conditions once promoted intense weathering, and

• the surrounding geology lacks significant limestone or sulphur-containing minerals (such as pyrite), because these could interfere with the formation of the iron-oxyhydroxide mineral sediments.

The red rocks of McGraths Flat open an entirely new chapter in our understanding of how exceptionally well-preserved fossil sites can form.

The next breakthrough in understanding ancient terrestrial life might not come from traditional shale or sandstone fossil beds, but from rusty-red rocks hidden beneath our feet.

The study’s authors acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and waterways on which McGraths Flat is located, the Wiradjuri Nation people.

Tara Djokic, Scientific Officer, Palaeontology, Australian Museum; UNSW Sydney

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For decades, small grooves on ancient human teeth were thought to be evidence of deliberate tool use – people cleaning their teeth with sticks or fibres, or easing gum pain with makeshift “toothpicks”. Some researchers even called it the oldest human habit.

But our new findings, published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, challenge this long-held idea about human evolution. We found these grooves also appear naturally in wild primates, with little support for tooth-picking as the cause.

Even more striking, in more than 500 wild primates, across 27 species both living and fossil, we found no trace of a common modern dental disease: deep, V-shaped gumline notches called abfraction lesions.

Together, these findings can help reshape how we interpret the fossil record and raise fresh questions about the uniquely human ways our teeth are affected today.

Why teeth matter in human evolution

Teeth are the most durable part of the skeleton and often survive long after the rest of the body has decayed. Anthropologists rely on them to reconstruct ancient diets, lifestyles and health.

Even tiny marks can carry important meaning. One recurring feature is the thin groove across exposed tooth roots, especially between teeth. Since the early 20th century, these have been labelled “toothpick grooves” and interpreted as signs of tool use or dental hygiene.

They have been reported across our recent evolutionary history, from 2-million-year-old fossils through to Neanderthals. But until now, no one had really checked whether other primates also have them.

A different condition, abfraction, looks very different – deep wedge-shaped notches near the gumline. These are very common in modern dentistry and often linked to tooth grinding, forceful brushing, or acidic drinks. Their absence in the fossil record has long puzzled researchers. Do other primates really never suffer from them?

What we did

To test these assumptions, we analysed more than 500 teeth from 27 primate species, both extinct and living. The sample included gorillas, orangutans, macaques, colobus monkeys, fossil apes and more.

Crucially, all specimens came from wild populations, meaning their tooth wear could not have been influenced by toothbrushes, soft drinks or processed foods.

We looked for non-carious cervical lesions – a name for tissue loss at the tooth neck not caused by decay. Using microscopes, 3D scans and tissue-loss measurements, we documented even the smallest lesions.

What we found

About 4% of individuals had lesions. Some looked almost identical to the classic “toothpick grooves” of fossil humans, complete with fine parallel scratches and tapering shapes.

Others were shallow and smooth, especially on front teeth, likely caused by acidic fruits that many primates consume in large amounts.

But one absence stood out. We found no abfraction lesions at all. Despite studying species with extremely tough diets and powerful chewing forces, not a single primate showed the wedge-shaped defects so commonly seen in modern dental clinics.

What does this mean?

First, grooves that resemble “toothpick” marks don’t necessarily prove tool use. Natural chewing, abrasive foods, or even swallowed grit can produce similar patterns. In some cases, specialised behaviours like stripping vegetation with the teeth may also contribute. We therefore need to be cautious about interpreting every fossil groove as deliberate toothpicking.

Second, the complete absence of abfraction lesions in primates strongly suggests these are a uniquely human problem, tied to modern habits. They are far more likely caused by forceful brushing, acidic drinks and processed diets than by natural chewing forces.

This places abfraction alongside other dental issues, such as impacted wisdom teeth and misaligned teeth, which are rare in wild primates but common in humans today. Together, these insights are shaping a growing subfield known as evolutionary dentistry, using our evolutionary past to understand the dental problems of the present.

Why it matters today

At first glance, grooves on fossil teeth may sound trivial. But they matter for both anthropology and dentistry.

For evolutionary science, they show why we must check our closest relatives before assuming a specific, or unique, cultural explanation. For modern health, they highlight how profoundly our diets and lifestyles alter our teeth in ways that set us apart from other primates.

By comparing human teeth with those of other primates, we can tease apart what’s universal (the inevitable wear and tear of chewing) and what’s uniquely human – the result of modern diets, behaviours and dental care.

What’s next?

Future research will expand to larger primate samples, investigate diet-wear links in the wild, and apply advanced imaging to see how lesions form. The aim is to refine how we interpret the past while finding new ways on how to prevent dental disease today.

What may look like a fossil human tooth-picking groove could just as easily be the by-product of everyday chewing. Equally, it might reflect other cultural or dietary behaviors that leave similar marks. To untangle these possibilities, we need much larger comparative datasets of lesions in wild primates, only then can we begin to trace broader patterns and refine our interpretations of the fossil record.

Meanwhile, the absence of abfraction lesions in primates suggests that some of our most common dental problems are uniquely human. It’s a reminder that even in something as everyday as toothache, our evolutionary history is written in our teeth, but shaped as much by modern habits as by ancient biology.

Ian Towle, Research Fellow in Biological Anthropology, Monash University and Luca Fiorenza, Senior Lecturer in Anatomical Sciences, Monash University

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You don’t need a gym membership, dumbbells, or expensive equipment to get stronger.

Since the beginning of time, we’ve had access to the one piece of equipment that is essential for strength training – our own bodies.

Strength training without the use of external forces and equipment is called “bodyweight training”.

From push-ups and squats to planks and chin-ups, bodyweight training has become one of the most popular ways to exercise because it can be done anywhere – and it’s free.

So, what is it, why does it work and how do you get started?

What is bodyweight training?

Bodyweight training simply means you use your own body weight as resistance, instead of external weights such as barbells and dumbbells.

Common exercises include push-ups, squats, lunges and sit-ups.

But bodyweight training can also use static holds that challenge your body without moving, like planks or yoga poses.

Bodyweight training can be used for any muscle group. Typically, we can break down the exercises by movement type and/or body region:

• upper body: push-ups, pull-ups, handstands
• lower body: squats, lunges, step-ups, glute bridges
• core: sit-ups, planks, mountain climbers
• whole body: burpees, bear crawls, jump squats.

Bodyweight training can also be done with equipment: calisthenics is a style of bodyweight training that uses bars, rings and outdoor gyms.

What are the main forms?

Types of bodyweight training include:

• calisthenics: often circuit-based (one exercise after another with minimal rest), dynamic and whole-body focused. Calisthenics is safe and effective for improving functional strength, power and speed, especially for older adults
• yoga: more static or flowing poses with an emphasis on flexibility and balance. Yoga is typically safe and effective for managing and preventing musculoskeletal injuries and supporting mental health
  
• Tai Chi: slower, more controlled movements, often with an emphasis on balance, posture and mindful movement
• suspension training: using straps or rings so your body can be supported in different positions while using gravity and your own bodyweight for resistance. This type or training is suitable for older adults through to competitive athletes
• resistance bands: although not strictly bodyweight only, resistance bands are a portable, low-cost alternative to traditional weights. They are safe and effective for improving strength, balance, speed and physical function.

What are the pros and cons?

There are various pros and cons to bodyweight exercises.

Pros:

• builds strength: a 2025 meta-analysis of 102 studies in 4,754 older adults (aged 70 on average) found bodyweight training led to substantial strength gains - which were no different from those with free weights or machines. These benefits aren’t just for older adults, though. Using resistance bands with your bodyweight workout can be as effective as traditional training methods across diverse populations
• boosts aerobic fitness: a 2021 study showed as little as 11 minutes of bodyweight exercises three times per week was effective for improving aerobic fitness
• accessible and free: bodyweight training avoids common barriers to exercise such as access to equipment and facilities, which means it can be done anywhere, without a gym membership
• promotes functional movement: exercises like squats and push-ups mimic everyday actions like rising from a chair or getting up from the floor.

Cons:

• difficulty progressing over time: typically, we can add weight to an exercise to increase difficulty. For bodyweight training, you need to be creative, such as slowing your tempo or progressing to unilateral (one-sided or single-limb) movements
• plateau risk: heavy external loads are more effective than bodyweight training for increasing maximal strength. This means if you stick to bodyweight training alone, your strength gains are more likely to plateau than if you use machines or free weights.

Tips for getting started (safely)

As with any form of exercise, it’s always best to speak to a medical professional before starting.

If you are ready to get going, here’s some tips:

• start small: pick simple moves to begin and progress them as you gain strength, confidence and experience
• focus on form: think quality over quantity. Completing movements with good control and body position is more important than how many you can do with poor control
• progress gradually: vary the number of sets or repetitions to make your exercise more challenging. You can progress the movements from easier (push-ups on your knees) to harder (decline push-ups) as you get stronger and need more of a challenge
• mix it up: use a variety of types of bodyweight training as well as targeting different muscle groups and movements
• seek guidance: reach out to your local exercise professionals or use apps like the Nike Training Club to help guide your planning and progress.
  

Bodyweight training means you don’t need expensive equipment to improve your health. Whether it’s squats in the park, push-ups at your children’s football game, or yoga at home, your body is a portable gym.

With consistency, creativity and time, bodyweight exercises can help you build strength and fitness.

Dan van den Hoek, Senior Lecturer, Clinical Exercise Physiology, University of the Sunshine Coast and Jackson Fyfe, Senior Lecturer, Strength and Conditioning Sciences, Deakin University

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Do your gums look red and often bleed when you brush them, but they’re not painful? If so, you could have the gum disease gingivitis.

Gingivitis is one of the most common inflammatory oral diseases. It affects an estimated 50–100% of adults and children at some point in their lives.

Luckily, gingivitis can be treated if caught in time. However, if left untreated, it can lead to more severe disease that could mean losing your teeth.

Here are some tell-tale signs of gingivitis and how you can work with a dental professional to treat it.

What does gingivitis look like?

The term gingivitis tells us what to expect. It’s when the gums (the gingiva) are inflamed (-itis). It’s essentially the body’s immune response to microbes in the sticky biofilm or plaque on the tooth surface.

You might notice subtle redness of the gums, close to where they meet the teeth, or of the part of the gums between the teeth. You might notice mild-to-moderate swelling of the gums. Or your gums might bleed when you brush or floss.

It can affect the gums close to a few or multiple teeth. Sometimes, it can lead to bad breath (halitosis).

Gingivitis generally develops over time. And you’ll see the most common form starting to develop if you haven’t brushed your teeth well (and have not removed the plaque) for a few days. Gingivitis is painless to start with.

But if it’s not treated it may lead to a more severe form of disease called periodontitis. This is when you also lose some of the bone that holds teeth in place. If periodontitis is left untreated, your teeth loosen and may fall out.

How did I get it?

Several factors increase the chances and severity of gingivitis, beyond poor oral hygiene.

For instance, changes in sex hormones during puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and oral contraceptive use can increase the severity of gingivitis. This is due to increased blood flow or a change in plaque’s microbial composition.

Other conditions that can worsen gingivitis include diabetes, leukaemia, if you don’t produce much saliva, and certain medications.

An infectious disease could also be behind gingivitis. Bacterial infections (such as streptococcal disease, syphilis and tuberculosis); viral infections (herpes, human papillomavirus, hand-foot-and-mouth disease); and fungal infections (candida thrush) can all involve gingivitis. But unlike the more common type, gingivitis related to infectious disease can also come with fever and enlarged lymph nodes.

A new growth – whether benign (non-cancerous), precancerous (could develop into cancer) or cancer – can present as localised lesions with inflamed gums.

Finally, gingivitis can be traumatic. That is, if you brush your teeth too hard, use cocaine or other drugs, or burn your mouth while eating or drinking hot food and drink, you might see acute inflammation of the gums.

Can I manage it at home?

Only to a limited extent. If you get in at the early stage (one to three days of symptoms), brushing your teeth well will help remove plaque, and so some of the microbes that cause the inflammation.

But if you leave it any longer and the plaque begins to calcify, a dentist or a dental hygienist will need to remove these hardened, rough, surface deposits known as calculus.

They use tools called ultrasonic scalers or manual scalers to remove the calculus and overlying plaque. After this treatment, signs of gingivitis usually resolve.

However, if there are underlying health issues that contribute to gingivitis, they will need to be addressed to see any improvement.

For instance, this could be treating an infection before, during or after scaling. You might also be prescribed a special mouthwash to help healing or relieve symptoms.

If you have a growth, or are diagnosed with periodontitis, you’ll be referred for specialist treatment.

Can mouthwash help?

Mouthwash often helps reduce the bacterial load in plaque. But you can’t rely on it as your only treatment. It is, however, often recommended after your gingivitis has been treated professionally, during the healing phase.

Your dental health professional may recommend chlorhexidine mouthwash twice daily for up to two weeks. You can buy this in the supermarket or pharmacy.

But using mouthwash long term to manage gingivitis (or for other reasons) is not advised. Prolonged use of chlorhexidine mouthwash can lead to side effects such as staining of the teeth and an altered sense of taste.

Some mouthwash also contains a small percentage of alcohol, which might not be the best option for people with a dry mouth as alcohol can be dehydrating. You might also want to avoid these in children, who might not like the burning sensation. There are alcohol-free versions, which are just as effective.

How do I prevent gingivitis returning?

You can prevent gingivitis, and most oral diseases, by brushing your teeth well twice a day and flossing once a day.

Regular dental check-ups also give dental professionals a perfect opportunity to detect and manage most gingivitis (and tooth decay) before it progresses.

Dileep Sharma, Professor and Head of Discipline - Oral Health, University of Newcastle

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In the chilling final scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece, The Godfather, the door to Michael Corleone’s office is closed in the face of his wife, Kay. It simultaneously signified the opening of many more doors for the career of actor Diane Keaton.

In that film, so heavily dominated by male actors, Keaton more than holds her own. For someone who would become known for her daffy, comic style, it showed us she also had serious dramatic acting chops.

The multi-award-winning actor, producer and director has died at the age of 79. She leaves behind a legacy of memorable roles in films that include classics such as The Godfather and Annie Hall, spanning genres from comedy to drama.

First steps on stage

Keaton started life in Los Angeles as Diane Hall on January 5 1946. The eldest child of Dorothy and Jack Hall, she was the only one of her siblings – brother Randy and sisters Robin and Dorrie – to show interest in the theatre. It came about in an unconventional way.

When she was “eight or nine”, she told NPR’s Fresh Air in 2004, her mother won “Mrs Los Angeles”

I remember sitting down [in the audience] watching her being crowned. It was that she was the perfect homemaker. […] I did not want to be a happy homemaker, that did not appeal to me. But I did want to go on stage. I saw that that was something that did appeal to me. There she was in the theatre, and I saw the curtain open and there was my mother. And I thought, ‘I think I like that for myself’.

Her career began as a teenage Blanche in Santa Ana High School’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

In her 2011 memoir, Then Again, she remembers her father coming backstage:

I could tell he was surprised by his awkward daughter – the one who’d flunked algebra and smashed the new Ford station wagon. For one thrilling moment, I was his Seabiscuit, Audrey Hepburn, and Wonder Woman rolled into one.

She began drama studies at nearby Santa Ana College but soon dropped out, took her mother’s maiden name – Keaton – and travelled to New York to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse.

In 1968, after a stint in summer stock, she was cast as an understudy in Hair on Broadway. She was 19 and famously refused to do the nude scene.

“It wasn’t for any sort of philosophical reason,” she told the New York Times in 1972, “It was just that I was too scared.”

Silver screen breakout

Her heart was set on the big screen which, of course, meant starting out on the small screen in shows like The FBI (“The worst thing I have ever done,” she told the New York Times. “I was unanimously, resoundingly bad!”) and Night Gallery.

Instead, it was theatre that led to her breakout screen roles.

In 2023, Francis Ford Coppola revealed to Hollywood Reporter he had seen Keaton in Hair.

He later told Keaton he cast her in The Godfather because,

although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier, and very interesting. (I was right).

Then she auditioned for a new theatrical comedy, Play it Again, Sam, by up-and-coming comedian Woody Allen. That turned out to be what’s known in romantic comedies as a meet cute.

It led not only to their much-publicised relationship, but to a significant collaboration in eight films including the 1977 hit Annie Hall.

For that role, Keaton won the Oscar for best actress. And her costume, designed by Ruth Morley, made her a fashion icon of the 70s. She also gave us the whimsical phrase, “la di dah”.

It’s often thought that Annie Hall was about her relationship with Allen, but as she told the New York Times, “It’s not true, but there are elements of truth in it”.

A force

For the next five decades, Keaton would become a Hollywood force.

She had comic roles in films like The First Wives Club (1996), Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and the Father of the Bride franchise. Alongside these comedies were remarkable dramatic roles in Looking for Mister Goodbar (1977), Reds (1981), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Marvin’s Room (1996) and two more Godfather films.

She was also a notable director of films like Unstrung Heroes (1995), Hanging Up (2000), Heaven (1987) and even an episode of Twin Peaks.

In addition to Annie Hall’s Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe, she received Oscar nominations for Reds, Marvin’s Room and Something’s Gotta Give (for which she won her second Golden Globe). She was also nominated for a Tony, two Emmys and another seven Golden Globes.

Despite much-publicised relationships with Al Pacino, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty, Keaton chose to remain single her whole life. In her 50s, she adopted two children, Dexter and Duke.

A rich creative life

Keaton made comedy look easy but told the New York Times in 1977 that “both comedy and drama are equally difficult”.

She later told Fresh Air,

You’re constantly battling with yourself when you’re acting in a [dramatic] part, at least I am. Because it’s just not that easy for me. I think I’m more inclined to live comfortably in the world of humour.

Either way, we were the richer for her creative life and are the poorer for her loss.

Chris Thompson, Lecturer in Theatre, Australian Catholic University

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After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990.

En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure. Thankfully, the launch went better than expected, and we could finally breathe again.

Six months later, Webb’s first images were revealed, of the most distant galaxies yet seen. However, for our team in Australia, the work was only beginning.

We would be using Webb’s highest-resolution mode, called the aperture masking interferometer or AMI for short. It’s a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope’s cameras, enhancing its resolution.

Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers. We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets.

Working with an instrument a million kilometres away

Hubble started its life seeing out of focus – its mirror had been ground precisely, but incorrectly. By looking at known stars and comparing the ideal and measured images (exactly like what optometrists do), it was possible to figure out a “prescription” for this optical error and design a lens to compensate.

The correction required seven astronauts to fly up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993 to install the new optics. Hubble orbits Earth just a few hundred kilometres above the surface, and can be reached by astronauts.

By contrast, Webb is roughly 1.5 million kilometres away – we can’t visit and service it, and need to be able to fix issues without changing any hardware.

This is where AMI comes in. This is the only Australian hardware on board, designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill.

It was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometres of distortion in Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key.

AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments.

Hunting blurry pixels

We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn’t working entirely as hoped.

At very fine resolution – at the level of individual pixels – all the images were slightly blurry due to an electronic effect: brighter pixels leaking into their darker neighbours.

This is not a mistake or flaw, but a fundamental feature of infrared cameras that turned out to be unexpectedly serious for Webb.

This was a dealbreaker for seeing distant planets many thousands of times fainter than their stars a few pixels away: my colleagues quickly showed that its limits were more than ten times worse than hoped.

So, we set out to correct it.

How we sharpened Webb’s vision

In a new paper led by University of Sydney PhD student Louis Desdoigts, we looked at stars with AMI to learn and correct the optical and electronic distortions simultaneously.

We built a computer model to simulate AMI’s optical physics, with flexibility about the shapes of the mirrors and apertures and about the colours of the stars.

We connected this to a machine learning model to represent the electronics with an “effective detector model” – where we only care about how well it can reproduce the data, not about why.

After training and validation on some test stars, this setup allowed us to calculate and undo the blur in other data, restoring AMI to full function. It doesn’t change what Webb does in space, but rather corrects the data during processing.

It worked beautifully – the star HD 206893 hosts a faint planet and the reddest-known brown dwarf (an object between a star and a planet). They were known but out of reach with Webb before applying this correction. Now, both little dots popped out clearly in our new maps of the system.

This correction has opened the door to using AMI to prospect for unknown planets at previously impossible resolutions and sensitivities.

It works not just on dots

In a companion paper by University of Sydney PhD student Max Charles, we applied this to looking not just at dots – even if these dots are planets – but forming complex images at the highest resolution made with Webb. We revisited well-studied targets that push the limits of the telescope, testing its performance.

With the new correction, we brought Jupiter’s moon Io into focus, clearly tracking its volcanoes as it rotates over an hour-long timelapse.

As seen by AMI, the jet launched from the black hole at the centre of the galaxy NGC 1068 closely matched images from much-larger telescopes.

Finally, AMI can sharply resolve a ribbon of dust around a pair of stars called WR 137, a faint cousin of the spectacular Apep system, lining up with theory.

The code built for AMI is a demo for much more complex cameras on Webb and its follow-up, Roman space telescope. These tools demand an optical calibration so fine, it’s just a fraction of a nanometre – beyond the capacity of any known materials.

Our work shows that if we can measure, control, and correct the materials we do have to work with, we can still hope to find Earth-like planets in the far reaches of our galaxy.

Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University

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