When Meriam elder Uncle Segar Passi looks to the night sky, there’s now a special place among the heavens he can call his own.
Key points:

• Five asteroids have been named after two Indigenous elders, two Indigenous academics and a Torres Strait island community
• The asteroids were originally discovered in 1979 at the Siding Springs Observatory in NSW
• Torres Strait Islander culture is linked to the stars, which inform laws, customs, and practices

A 1.9-kilometre…

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15 August 2020
CASSANDRA GARRISON
Reuters
Greenland’s ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests. 
Scientists studied data on 234 glaciers across the Arctic territory spanning 34 years through 2018 and found that annual snowfall was no longer enough to replenish glaciers of the snow and ice being lost to summertime melting.
A fishing vessel sails in the ice fjo…

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A woolly brown rhinoceros that weighed two tons once roamed northeastern Siberia before mysteriously disappearing around 14,000 years ago.
Was its demise caused by humans, or the warming climate of the time?
A new study by a Swedish and Russian team of scientists who examined DNA fragments from the remains of 14 of these prehistoric mammals lets our species off the hook.
They say the population of the animal — also known by its scientific name Coelodonta antiquitatis — remained stable for m…

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