The next time you pick up a bag of spuds from the supermarket or fill up the car with petrol, you can thank the Treaty of the Metre for the metric system that underpins daily life.

The treaty was signed exactly 150 years ago, when delegates from 17 countries gathered on a Parisian spring day to establish a new and standardised way of measuring the world around us.

But the metre's inception predates the treaty that bears its name by nearly 100 years. So how did it come about, and how has its definition changed over the centuries?

Amateur fossil hunters make a major discovery. And Marilyn Renfree describes the sophisticated reproduction of marsupials.

Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) were named by whalers because their high oil content made them the "right" ones to kill.

In the decades since whaling was banned, southern right numbers increased — but a new study shows that population growth stalled, and might've dropped a bit, despite current numbers still far below what they were in pre-whaling times.

So what's going on with the southern rights?

David Walker at UCLA says he can halt aging in fruit flies. Can the same concepts be applied to humans? And two tertiary students and an artist describe combining science and artistic pursuits.

Cobras, taipans, black mambas — Tim Friede's been intentionally bitten more than 200 times by some of the most venomous snakes on Earth.

And he survived, mostly because years of self-injecting venom let him develop immunity to them.

(Please do not try this yourself!)

Now his blood's been used to make a broad-spectrum antivenom that researchers say may protect against nearly 20 deadly snakes.

But this is not how antivenom is usually made. So how are snake antivenoms produced, and where are we with a "universal" version?

Mansi Kasliwal describes how she detects supernovae – the massive stellar explosions where elements are formed. We learn how dung beetles saved the Australian environment from the big problem, and David Attenborough shares his love for Birds-of-paradise.

Hate getting needles? You're in good company — one in five people in Australia have needle fear.

Sharks have survived 500 million years while mass extinctions have wiped out other species. Now, sharks are under threat.

Somewhere out past Mars in the early hours of Easter Monday, a space probe called Lucy whizzed by an asteroid named Donaldjohanson.

Lucy then sent back images showing Donaldjohanson is about five kilometres wide and shaped like a peanut.

It's one of a handful of asteroids on Lucy's 12-year itinerary.

So what does the billion-dollar mission hope to achieve?

Palaeontology helps reveal why some animals are in desperate need of help while others thrive.