ENVIRONMENT

The Royal Navy went on a red alert upon finding out that Russian warships are planning to sail along the British coast on its way to Syria. Among the Russian warships photographed sailing off Ramsgate, Kent, were the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the Kirov class battlecruiser Peter the Great.

Quora forum members listed several places, mostly in the southern hemisphere, as good places to be in if World War III would happen. Another alternative is to look for an underground bunker nearest you, or if you have money, have a Doomsday bunker built.

With talks of World War III becoming inevitable, people are now looking into options how to survive an anticipated global nuclear war between the US and Russia. Those who have money are building apocalypse-proof underground bunkers, while in online discussion forums, there are cities or nations recommended as good places to survive another global war.

The threat of a global war looms after Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended on Monday a treaty with Washington on the clean-up of weapons-grade plutonium, indicating his willingness to use nuclear disarmament to bargain with the US over Ukraine and Syria. Ironically, on Oct 7, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro just awarded Putin the Hugo Chavez Prize for Peace and Sovereignty of the People.

Fears of a third global war were further stoked on Thursday after Russia launched from a submarine in the Barents Sea the Topol missile, the fastest in the world, as part of a series of ballistics test. However, on the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered all officials with relatives living overseas to fly them back to Russia because of heightened tensions on the prospect of World War III.

We Are Anonymous, the group behind the hacking of government websites, claims that Pentagon has admitted that World War III is around the corner. Other groups also see in the statement of Marine Gen Joseph Dunford, commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the US must declare war on Syria and Russia to implement a “no-fly zone” over Syria.

In an incredible discovery, a Queensland scientist has found 11 new species of trapdoor spider in forests and on mountains around the state. Some of the bigger species found are about the size of a human palm and have fangs about one centimetre long. They can inflict serious damage if they bite. Some of the new species are deadly.

In an Australian first, abundant marine life, colourful sponges and rare black corals have been captured by deep sea divers on a granite reef off the east coast of Tasmania. Interestingly, much of these discoveries may be new to science, revealed Hobart's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies on Thursday.

Fossil remains of a new, small species of extinct marsupial lions that roamed Northern Australia 18 million years ago have been unearthed in north-western Queensland. The newly-discovered kitten-sized lion species has been named after British naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

Researchers have found that large catfish are eating mice in a desert river in Western Australia's Pilbara region. Murdoch University researchers were surprised to find native spinifex hopping mice at varying stages of digestion in eight of the 18 lesser salmon catfish caught in the Ashburton River. Moreover, two of the fish had remains of rodents in their stomach.

Researchers in Western Australia have found that giant goldfish weighing up to 1.9 kilograms are threatening freshwater species in WA waterways. People are dumping unwanted pet goldfish in the waterways and they are reaching massive sizes. This is threatening the ecosystem.

Reports suggest that two-thirds of the people visiting Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are doing so for the last time. Most of the tourists want to see the reef before it dies from massive coral bleaching. The health of the reef is a sorry state with more and more tourists paying it a visit to experience it one last time.

Almost 24 native species in Queensland have been given the threatened status. The government is now gathering support for tougher vegetation clearing laws. It has come to the point where scientists should question why more and more species are being lost. Australia already has the alarming record of losing the most mammals.

In a world-first study, Australian researchers have calculated the proportion of our suntan that comes from beyond the Milky Way. This skin-tanning, natural radiation comes not from the sun but distant hungry black holes and stars and is known as intergalactic solarium. This alien radiation is also known as extra-galactic background light that that gives the tan. This alien light well beyond our galaxy helps beachgoers get that tanned bronze.

NASA thinks Venus may have looked like Earth once. It was a planet capable of life, with a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperature for up to two billion years.

Earth’s past climate has always been a mystery to scientists but ancient ice may hold clues to the mysteries surrounding it. In fact, ancient ice is already helping researchers understand Earth’s past climate and experts are now focusing on a massive freezer in suburban Denver known as the National Ice Core Laboratory in Lakewood. The ice is transported to the Colorado lab from Greenland and Antarctica.

A new form of colour has been discovered in peacock spiders. The structural colour that male peacock spiders display has never been documented before. Such colouration is much less common than pigment colouration where natural substances provide the colour to plants and animals. It is common in beetles and peacocks.

New Townsville research centre has its focus on the endangered green turtles. Scientists opened the centre in Queensland to unravel the mysteries of green turtles and also put an end to their high mortality rates. Physiology of green turtles of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef plays a big role in protecting the reef’s ecosystem. However, little is known about their physiology.

Australian scientists have developed a highly-advanced test, known as eDNA, that may save the endangered largetooth sawfish. The researchers of Australia’s four extremely rare sawfish developed the test for an easier way to find estuaries the fish exist in. The new way will be able to successfully test large bodies of water for DNA of the sawfish and that will make key habitats easier to find.

Researchers have found that whales’ ultrasonic hearing has an ancient history. Their high-frequency hearing abilities arose earlier than anticipated. Morgan Churchill of New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York, said that the high-frequency hearing of whales may have preceded the emergence of echolocation.

Experts have revealed that humpback whales save other species from ocean killers. Apart from their gigantic size, spectacular leaps and gentle behaviour, whales also have another amazing characteristic and that is concern for other animals.

Scientists may have found an answer to why one of the last known groups of woolly mammoths died and were wiped out from the face of Earth. As per a new study, Alaskan woolly mammoths could have died of thirst as water became scarce around five thousand years ago.

In almost three decades, Lake Pedder in Tasmania is set to overflow for the first time. In the last 24 hours heavy rains lashed the region and the lake’s water level has risen 20cm. With capacity now at 99 percent, the lake is set to overflow on Wednesday.

Frogs are remarkably diverse when it comes to sex and reproduction. Cornell University frog biologists have revealed in a new study that some frogs hide on land to reduce competition from other males who also want to fertilize those eggs. They have sex on land as they have smaller testes.

Researchers with the Ocean Exploration Trust are scratching their heads after Exploration Vessel Nautilus unearthed a purple-coloured orb underwater in the Channel Islands off the coast of California.

Researchers have revealed that all life as we see today descended from a microbe about four billion years ago. The microbe adapted itself to survive mineral-rich, oxygen-free and warm environments.

A new study suggests that rocks formed beneath the ocean floor via rapidly-spreading tectonic plates may be a massive free source of hydrogen gas previously overlooked. The finding by Duke University researchers in the US may prove to be a goldmine for scientists as they believe free hydrogen gas (H2) may be responsible for life on Earth.

Scientists have revealed that the gravitational pull between the moon and the sun does not only cause high and low tides on Earth. The tug can also cause a special type of earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. Scientists have come to this conclusion after analysing 81,000 low-frequency earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault.

Researchers from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome have revealed that an “extinct” volcano is coming back to life. They have warned that if it erupts, it will be as violent as the Mt Vesuvius one that wiped out Pompeii completely.