• Australian scientists stalking, sensing and trapping elusive dark matter

• Gravitational waves. Have more been found, what is Australia’s role, and why should we care?

• Our neutrino world – explained by 2015 Nobel Prize winner Takaaki Kajita

• The world’s biggest experiment – a multi-billion machine, with first results in 2025, hear from those working on it in Europe and Australia

• We have the technology. Australia set to ride the quantum computing wave

More on these and other stories from this week’s Physics Congress below. [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…]