The Milky Way is warped

Niall on 5 February, 2019

A slightly exaggerated impression of the real shape of our warped and twisted Milky Way. Image: Xiaodian Chen (National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

The first accurate 3D map of our galaxy reveals its true shape: warped and twisted.

Background information and further images below.

Astronomers from Macquarie University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have used 1339 ‘standard’ stars to map the real shape of our home galaxy in a paper published in Nature Astronomy today.

They found the Milky Way’s disc of stars becomes increasingly ‘warped’ and twisted the further away the stars are from the galaxy’s centre.

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Reinventing the laser

Operations on 29 August, 2017

High-power diamond lasers, invented at Macquarie University, Eureka finalist

High-power lasers have many potential applications: from medical imaging to manufacturing, shooting down drones or space junk, or powering deep space probes. But current laser technologies overheat at high power.

Rich Mildren and his team have developed a technique to make diamond lasers that, in theory, have extraordinary power range. Five years ago, their lasers were just a few watts in power. Now they’ve reached 400 watts, close to the limit for comparable conventional lasers.

Their calculations suggest that their diamond laser technology could handle over a thousand times the current power. They’ve also shown that they can use diamond to focus multiple laser beams into a single beam. And they can create almost any frequency of light.

Diamond is an outstanding optical material and exceptionally good at dissipating heat. But it’s not very good at generating a laser beam as its dense structure makes it difficult to introduce the impurity additives normally needed to amplify light. Until now.

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$2 billion telescope good for Africa, Australia and the world

Niall on 26 May, 2012

Looking for life, dark energy and the beginning of time

Southern Africa, Australia and NZ are to share the Square Kilometre Array – a giant radio telescope that will consist of thousands of separate radio dishes and other antennae spread across an area the size of a continent.

We’ve pulled together links to our stories and to other sites about SKA. Feel free to use our stories as raw material for your own accounts. Read More about $2 billion telescope good for Africa, Australia and the world

Revealing the dark side – in Tasmania this week

Science in Public on 26 September, 2011

Tamara Davis - 2009 FellowWhat we see in the night sky is only five per cent of the Universe. So what’s the other 95 per cent of the Universe made of – a young physicist has the answers across Tasmania this week.

One of Australia’s leading young physicists will reveal the dark secrets of the Universe in Tasmania this week with a series of school and public talks in Burnie, Launceston, Devonport and Hobart.

Dr Tamara Davis is a L’Oréal Australia Fellow, the 2011 national Women in Physics lecturer, an astrophysicist at the Universities of Queensland and Copenhagen, and good talent. Read More about Revealing the dark side – in Tasmania this week

Born from astronomy…Creating a future with astronomy

Operations on 3 September, 2011

In 1768 the British Admiralty sent Captain James Cook to the Pacific to monitor the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun. On his way home to England, Cook mapped Australia’s east coast, and claimed New South Wales.

For about 40,000 years before that, the indigenous peoples of Australia had been developing remarkably sophisticated explanations of the workings of the Southern Sky. Read More about Born from astronomy…Creating a future with astronomy