Australian Institute of Physics Congress
The 22nd Australian Institute of Physics Congress was held as a joint conference with the 13th Asia Pacific Physics Conference in December 2016.
Below are the media releases, media alerts and other news items released during the Congress. The proceeding were also tweeted from @AsiaAusPhysics and @ausphysics on #BrisPhys16. The conference website is appc-aip2016.org.au.
If you’d like more information on any of these stories, please contact
Thursday 8 December 2016
Professor Alain Aspect firmly believes we’ve entered the second quantum revolution—an age which will see radical technological developments across industries, from manufacturing and measurement, to energy generation and computing.
During the first quantum revolution, we discovered the rules that govern the quantum realm, and how they differ from classical physics. Those discoveries, from 1950 onward, led to the invention of lasers, transistors and optical fibres.
Now in the second revolution we’re taking these rules and using them to develop new technologies in communications, measurement, and computing. Today at the Physics Congress, Alain Aspect from Institut d’Optique Graduate School will review how we got to where we are today, and share his hopes for what’s next. [continue reading…]
Thursday 8 December 2016
On the final day of the Physics Congress in Brisbane we’re hearing about inventions that could change the way we generate and store power.
Researchers available for interview, contact Toni Stevens on 0401 763 130 or toni@scienceinpublic.com.au
QUT researchers spot solar revolution in fly eyes
The compound eyes of flies have inspired QUT researchers hunting for the perfect solar cell.
Fly eyes have evolved over millions of years to make the most of the tiny amount of visible light that hits them in a brilliant example of natural nanotechnology. The team’s zinc-oxide replicas pull off the same tricks, using a three-zone structure copied straight from a real-life fly. The bio-inspired nanomaterial captures energy across a wide solar spectrum using only one material, something that conventional solar panels struggle to achieve with a plethora of metals. The fly-eye solution comes “very close to perfection,” says Dr Ziqi Sun, and could readily be incorporated into modern solar cells for an impressive boost in energy harvesting.
At the conference Ziqi will talk about the underlying technology that he and his colleagues have developed to make nano-structures using sheets of metal oxides. The new solar cell design will be published in Materials Today Chemistry. [continue reading…]
Wednesday 7 December 2016
Have more been found, what is Australia’s role, and why should we care?
Back in February 2016 it was Professor David Reitze who announced to the world that gravitational waves had been discovered at LIGO, 100 years after Einstein predicted them.
Credit: Matt Heintze/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab
And now they want to find more. Last Thursday LIGO resumed the search for gravitational waves and the world is eagerly awaiting the results.
Today in Brisbane David Reitze will give a first-hand account of what it is like to make a potentially Nobel-prize winning discovery, which is being hailed as the beginning of a new era in astronomy.
[continue reading…]
Wednesday 7 December 2016
Nanorubies and diamonds make your cancer cells stand out in a crowd (Melbourne)
Near-infrared fluorescent nanomaterials could help surgeons better identify tumour tissue to remove, and healthy tissue to leave, according to researchers at RMIT. Dr Philipp Reineck and his team tested seven classes of red and near-infrared fluorescent materials in spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy experiments for the first time. They found that nanomaterials such as nanodiamonds and nanorubies are vastly more stable than the organic dyes currently in use—glowing brighter for longer. [continue reading…]
Tuesday 6 December 2016
Scientists available for interview from the Physics Congress in Brisbane
We have the technology! The first simple quantum computers are being built all over the world as decades of research and development culminate in technology that accurately builds structures atom by atom.
Researchers already have practical plans for building usable quantum computers based on silicon, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology Professor Michelle Simmons, at the University of New South Wales, will tell the Australian Physics Congress in Brisbane on Wednesday. [continue reading…]
Tuesday 6 December 2016
It’s the world’s biggest experiment—a multi-billion machine, with first results in 2025.
Speakers from around the world, including senior advisor to the ITER project Professor Jean Jacquinot, will speak at the Physics Congress in Brisbane about the global race to master the process that powers our sun. Researchers from ANU will speak about Australia’s involvement. [continue reading…]
Tuesday 6 December 2016
No more exploding smartphones: Australia-China supercapacitor collaboration (Brisbane)
The perils of lithium-ion batteries are well known to owners of the Galaxy Note 7, but battery fires have also plagued power plants and even passenger jets in-flight. The Queensland Government is getting behind an Australia-China collaboration to build supercapacitors: purely electric storage devices using graphene, which promise many advantages over their chemical-based cousins.
QUT’s Professor Nunzio Motta is leading the Australian end of the research. The major challenge is developing scalable ways of growing graphene sheets. At the Congress, he’ll present his work on growing graphene for other kinds of electronic components but he’s happy to talk about both areas and the potential of graphene. He imagines, for example, a car or train in which the body panels act as energy stores extending the battery range, and storing energy from braking. [continue reading…]
Monday 5 December 2016
Scientists available for interview from the Physics Congress in Brisbane
Media contacts
Australian physicists are using all the skills of experienced hunters in their quest for dark matter, the 85 per cent of matter in the Universe we have not been able to detect. And they are getting closer to their quarry.
Members of three separate groups from across the continent will give the latest updates from the hunt at the APPC-AIP Physics Congress in Brisbane.
Dark matter is so called because it does not interact with light or any other electromagnetic radiation. So the physicist hunters need to use all their ingenuity to track it down. [continue reading…]
Monday 5 December 2016
A new constellation of Australian satellites – packed up and ready for launch in 2017 (Canberra)
Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU
Australia is heading into space: Professor Christine Charles (ANU) was part of the Australian team of Universities that are launching Australian research satellites into space for the first time in over a decade.
Three Australian designed and built cubesats – satellites the size of a loaf of bread – are soon to be launched into space as part of the EU QB 50 Program.
Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU
Charles’ plasma thruster system for spacecraft is just one of the Aussie ideas which is being studied to extend the capabilities of nano-satellites. Christine Charles will explain the possibilities for this renaissance of Australian space science.
[continue reading…]
Rediscovering the physicist born a century ago in Far North Queensland who went on to win a Nobel Prize for his role in the invention of the laser.
Australia’s forgotten Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Prokhorov was born 11 July 1916 in Atherton, Far North Queensland—the child of refugee parents fleeing Tsarist Russia.
When he died in 2002, Prokhorov was a nation
al hero in Russia. Here, his Australian roots are largely forgotten.
Australian physicists are now working to change that.
The Australian Optical Society (AOS) sessions at the Congress on Monday morning will be held in honour of Prokhorov— AOS President, Professor Stephen Collins can speak to the topic.
The centenary of Prokhorov’s birth was also celebrated in a series of spectacular laser-shows in Far North Queensland as part of National Science Week.
[continue reading…]
Sunday 4 December 2016
- Highlights from Day 1 of the Physics Congress
- Australian and international researchers available for interview throughout the week
- For more highlights, and daily updates visit www.scienceinpublic.com.au/physicscongress
Our neutrino world – explained by 2015 Nobel Prize winner Professor Takaaki Kajita
We live in a world of neutrinos. Thousands of billions of neutrinos—mostly created by the Sun—are flowing through your body every second. You cannot see them and you do not feel them. So how did we discover they have mass, and why does that challenge our standard model of the Universe?
Professor Kajita will give a public lecture, telling the story of shape-shifting particles and underground super-labs on Monday night hosted by Australian physicist Hans Bachor (ANU), with early career astrophysicist Tamara Davis (UQ) and neutrino physicist Yvonne Wong (UNSW). [continue reading…]
The biennial Physics Congress in Brisbane
4 to 8 December
Researchers from every State plus international and Asian leaders
All stories embargoed until released during the Congress.
The biggest discovery of 2016 – gravitational waves. Hear from one of the leaders on what’s next.
Einstein said we’d never find them. But we did. Have more been found? What’s Australia’s role, and why should we care? Researchers from Canberra, Melbourne, and Perth will talk about their work on gravitational waves.
Our neutrino world – explained by 2015 Nobel Prize winner Takaaki Kajita
We live in a world of neutrinos. Thousands of billions of neutrinos—mostly created by the Sun—are flowing through your body every second. You cannot see them and you do not feel them. So how did we discover they have mass, and why does that challenge our standard model of the Universe? Kajita will also be meeting with school students.
$20 billion, with a result is expected in 2035. The world’s largest science experiment hopes to crack fusion power.
Speakers from around the world, including senior advisor to the ITER project Jean Jacquinot, will speak about the global race to harness the process that powers our Sun. Researchers from ANU will be available to speak about Australia’s involvement. [continue reading…]
Public Lecture 7pm Monday 5 December
Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Great Halls 1 & 2
Register for the event here: www.trybooking.com/OBQF
We live in a world of neutrinos. Thousands of billions of neutrinos—mostly created by the Sun—are flowing through your body every second. You cannot see them and you do not feel them; and they are very hard for scientists to measure.
Then, when scientists were finally able to catch them, there were fewer than they expected. But why? Was our Sun losing its power?
Join us on Monday 5 December for a free public lecture by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015, Professor Takaaki Kajita: the man credited with the discovery of neutrino oscillations, and the solution to this riddle. [continue reading…]
- Picking endangered parrots out from the dawn chorus
- Could maths and science have shortened WW1?
- Lawrence Krauss
- Nobel-winning photon-juggler replaces Schrödinger’s cat
These topics and more on the final day of the national physics conference, Thursday 11 December [continue reading…]
Good science happens when clever people ask insightful questions. Some papers at the national physics congress in Canberra last week took on their colleagues—asking penetrating questions of mainstream science. [continue reading…]
Victorian government supports plans to build a dark matter laboratory deep in Stawell Gold Mine.
The Victorian government has committed $1.75 million to help Australian scientists hunt for dark matter a kilometre underground in the Stawell gold mine in regional Victoria. The project will commence once the Federal government provides matching support from their regional development program.
[continue reading…]
Physicists recognised this week at the national physics congress in Canberra have won recognition for:
- Using lasers to safeguard future communications
- Replacing Schrödinger’s famous ‘cat in a box’ with photons and mirrors
- Engaging students by changing the way we usually teach science
- Bending light for nanoscale photonics and light-driven computing
[continue reading…]
- Football physics tackles hamstring injuries
- Finding airports 50 light years away
- A sun on earth- fact or fiction
- Laser tracking of carbon-coughing cattle
- A Victorian goldfields search for galactic dark matter
These topics and more on day three of the national physics conference, Wednesday 10 December [continue reading…]
Tomorrow at the national physics and optics conference in Canberra:
- The catastrophe of a four degree temperature rise – clouds not helping
- LabPunk – scientific jewellery
- Letting the quantum cat out of the box
- Finding airports on Alpha Centauri’s planets
- Laser beams guarantee data privacy for companies and governments
- Shrinking X-ray microscopes down to fit on the laboratory bench
- Using science to create patterns
- Bending light for faster communication and light-driven computing
There’s more information on these below and much more at www.scienceinpublic.com.au/category/conferences/physicscongress
[continue reading…]
