On the Radar

The pick of the science news

Cool, calm and collected

A lonely spot near the South Pole is the coldest, driest and calmest place on Earth, and it could be a perfect site for a robotic observatory. That's according to a US-Australian research team who were trying to pinpoint the ideal site for stargazing: "Ridge A" in the Australian Antarctic, 4,053m above sea-level. "It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all," says Dr Will Saunders at the University of New South Wales, lead author of the study in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

“The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers. Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on Earth.”

By numbers

6.8

The cargo, in tonnes, delivered to the International Space Station by the US shuttle Discovery, which docked at the weekend

7,500

The number of years ago that humans developed the capacity to digest cow’s milk, according to a study of early dairy farmers in central Europe

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