Melbourne scientists have trained a dish of human brain cells to play Pong. They call it (of course) DishBrain, and it’s a world-first. The team describe their work as a “cyborg brain” and in a paper published on Thursday in leading journal Neuron claim it is showing signs of sentience – but not consciousness.

You may have seen that the Bureau of Meteorology decided that today was the right moment to send out a press release announcing they are essentially re-branding, and should no longer be referred to as “the Bom”. It’s just a really silly move, but I thought it would be a nice opportunity to talk about what Bom does and ask the audience how they feel about it, and/or reminisce about any particularly odd rebranding moves they can recall.

One of the largest portions of the Karoonda meteorite is going to the South Australia Museum, 92 years after it fell. It was an incredibly rare event in 1930, when the rock crashing into earth was observed and found several weeks later (most meteorites sit for a couple of million years before they’re picked up). It likely dates back to the formation of the Sun.

We mentioned pigeons a few weeks ago (pigeon-fanciers are a great natural foe of the peregrine falcon), and over the weekend some 1,500 homing pigeons were released in Coober Pedy to race back to Adelaide – the fastest one made it in  about nine hours, clocking in at about 1,334 metres per minute.