astronomy

Home wanted for $140 million wave detector; the physics of money flow and other stories

9 December 2010

Here’s today’s stories from the physics congress in Melbourne.

Good Aussie home wanted for gravitational wave detector
The physics of money – testing the stability of the system
Superconductors reveal their secrets
First results from the ATLAS experiment
Sun sneaks up on winter workers
Watching electrons in action
Laser beams on steroids
Light rays treat tumours
Contact [continue reading…]

Tomorrow’s technology pioneers; diamond in your eyes and your blood and other stories

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Today’s stories from the physics conference in Melbourne include:

Tomorrow’s technology pioneers recognised today

  • From the laser to quantum optics
    Prof Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov (Kostya.Ostrikov@csiro.au), a CSIRO scientist who set the ground rules for constructing new materials atom by atom using collections of charged particles known as plasmas;
  • Teleportation
    Prof Hans-Albert Bachor (hans.bachor@anu.edu.au) from the Australian National University (ANU) whose work on the graininess or particle nature of light is leading to new technologies such as quantum encryption and teleportation;
  • Laser controllers
    A/Prof Robert Scholten (scholten@unimelb.edu.au), a University of Melbourne physicist who has established a thriving and profitable business which makes and exports laser controllers; and
  • Acoustics of music
    Prof Joe Wolfe (j.wolfe@unsw.edu.au) of the University of New South Wales, an expert on the acoustics of music whose multimedia learning resources are accessed about 60,000 times a day.

Also:
Diamond dust adds sparkle to medical imaging
Electronic paper makes itself
Bionic valves without the batteries
Invisible fibres disappearing soon
Acquiring a better feel for disease
Healthy and unhealthy brain states – what role does electrical conductivity play?
Is that a diamond in your eye? [continue reading…]

Space storms, Aussies at the LHC, home computers find pulsars and more…

7 December 2010

Here’s today’s stories from the physics congress in Melbourne.
Space storms threat to power and phones
Are solar flares damaging our ozone layer?
The future of nuclear science
Superconductors reveal their secrets
Dark matter: detecting the invisible
Pulsar found with 250,000 home computers
Lies, damn lies and climate change sceptics: what has really caused recent global warming?
Australians to play with the Large Hadron Collider

[continue reading…]

Director General CERN announces $25M Australian centre on origins of universe

Media Release

Tuesday 7 December 2010

Isssued by the University of Melbourne

The Director General of CERN, Switzerland, Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, has announced a new $25m Australian Research Council Centre to explore the origins of the universe after the big bang at the Australian Institute of Physics Congress today.

Led by the University of Melbourne, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Experimental Particle Physics at the Terascale will explore particle physics at terascale energies (a million million electron volts) through the ATLAS experiment, which is a giant particle detector attached to Large Hadron Collider at CERN. [continue reading…]