Free Astronomy Public Lectures

Presented by Prof. Geoff Taylor on 2nd December 2011

The Large Hadron Collider is operating beautifully well. Data from the highest energy particle collisions produced in the laboratory is being amassed at rates never before achieved. The big experiments, including the ATLAS experiment, on which Australian scientists collaborate, are operating extraordinarily well considering their complexity. The level of sophistication of analyses achieved with such a short period of operation has surprised the scientific world. Searches for the Higgs boson, Supersymmetry and other exotic phenomena are well underway. This presentation will give the status of these searches in the LHC/ATLAS program.
The new ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale ("CoEPP") brings together Australian experimentalist and theorists from Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Monash. It will provide the resources and the focus to fully participate in the LHC program. A description of the CoEPP and its key goals will be covered in the presentation.

Presented by Dr Darren Croton on 15th June 2011.

Black holes are amongst the most bizarre objects predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Many people may not realise that our own galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole at its centre that is three million times more massive than our own Sun! In this talk Associate Professor Darren Croton discusses the physics of black holes and their formation, how they can grow to become so massive, active black hole "quasars" in the distant universe and the unexpected impact that a supermassive black hole can have on the evolution of an entire galaxy. We will finish by side stepping into the exotic world of wormholes, the black hole's tormented cousin.

Presented by Dr Glen Mackie on 15th April 2011.

Galaxies have been observed from ultra high energy gamma rays to long wavelength radio waves, providing fundamental insights into their formation and evolution. Until now, astronomy atlases preferentially showed (only) optical images of galaxies. Unveiling the secrets of some of the best observed galaxies, the published MAG contains over 250 full colour images of 35 galaxies spanning the whole electromagnetic spectrum. MAG explains why we see the component stars, gas and dust via different radiation processes, and describes the telescopes and instruments used. The lecture will discuss the metamorphosis from a personal web site to an academic textbook, the author - publisher (Cambridge University Press) relationship, and highlights from the textbook.

Presented by A/Prof Charles Lineweaver (ANU) on 19th November 2010.

The scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been going on for 50 years. So far, no signals from intelligent aliens have been detected. Presented by Associate Professor Charles Lineweaver (ANU) on 19 November 2010.

Presented by Dr Jonathan Gardner on 23rd February 2011.

Astronomy is going through a scientific revolution, responding to a flood of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, other space mission and large telescopes on the ground. In this talk, I will discuss some of the most important astronomical discoveries of the last 10 years and the role that space telescopes have played in those discoveries.

Presented by Professor Richard Ellis on 7th September 2010.

In 1919, Arthur Eddington demonstrated Einsteins's prediction that the Sun's gravity deflects the path of light rays. This phenomonon, termed 'gravitational lensing' is now one of the most powerful tools of the modern astronomer. Professor Ellis reviews the history and progress in charting how dark matter is distributed and how easily galaxies can be located using gravitational lensing.

Presented by Dr Christopher Fluke on 20th August 2010.

Advancements in modern astronomy are increasingly dependent on access to powerful computing facilities. This talk introduces the exciting new world of CPU-powered astronomy, which is taking us from computer games to galaxies.

Presented by Dr Emma Ryan-Weber on 16th April 2010.

How did the elements come into existence, and how we can use them to count the number of stars in the early Universe? This talk will reveal the dark ages of the Universe.

Presented by Sarah Burke-Spolaor and Lina Levin on 19th February 2010.

Pulsars are the compact cores of dead stars that periodically flash radio beams at Earth. The regularity of their flashing makes them somewhat like highly accurate clocks--however not all pulsars are very well behaved. This lecture will give a background to pulsar astronomy and detail the extreme behaviours that some of these enigmatic stars exhibit. New, bizarre classes of pulsars are regularly being discovered, and we will present hot-off-the-press discoveries that have been made by an international team of astronomers that includes members of the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.