Sarah

Sarah Wild is a multiaward-winning science journalist. She studied physics, electronics and English literature at Rhodes University in an effort to make herself unemployable. It didn't work and she now writes about particle physics, cosmology and everything in between. Sarah was the science editor for both Business Day and the Mail & Guardian before moving on to WildOnScience, and the world of freelance writing and training. In 2012 she published her first full-length non-fiction book, Searching African Skies: The Square Kilometre Array and South Africa's Quest to Hear the Songs of the Stars. In 2015 she published her second non-fiction book, Innovation: Shaping South Africa through Science.

SA researchers turn smartphones into hearing tests

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Software developed by University of Pretoria researchers could bring cheaper hearing tests to South Africa’s rural areas. The hearScreen technology, which has been patented and is in the process of being licensed, can turn any smartphone into an audiometer to test people’s hearing. According to the 2011 census, about 4% of South Africa’s 51-million citizens … Read more

Water on the Red Planet

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Liquid water may flow on present-day Mars, the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced on Monday. Liquid water is necessary for life as we know it, and its discovery on Mars adds to the evidence that the red planet could support life. Carbon-based life exists on Earth because it is in the … Read more

SKA one step closer to being another CERN

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China this week joined a “select” group of countries that had entered into negotiations to create a treaty organisation to govern the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the SKA Organisation said on Tuesday. The SKA, which has a conservative price tag of €2-billion, will be the world’s largest radio telescope, comprising thousands of antennae throughout Australia … Read more

Jury still out on Homo naledi, as majority of fossils remain in chamber

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In the dark and humid Dinaledi Chamber at the Cradle of Humankind, dozens – possibly hundreds – of fossils are still undisturbed. This week, National Geographic explorer-in-residence and Wits University professor Lee Berger announced the discovery of 15 individuals, which his team of international scientists claim is a new species, Homo naledi, that were deposited … Read more

From the Cradle to the grave? #NalediFossils

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They moved the bodies in one at a time, from the old with their worn teeth to newborn babies. If they had been modern humans, the Dinaledi Chamber would have been called a burial site. But the creatures are not human. Homo naledi (“naledi” means star in the local Sotho language) is a new species … Read more