Research using new antennas in the Australian hinterland has reduced background noise and brought us closer to finding a 13-billion-year-old signal

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The early Universe was dark, filled with a hot soup of opaque particles. These condensed to form neutral hydrogen which coalesced to form the first stars in what astronomers call the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR).

“Finding the weak signal of this first light will help us understand how the early stars and galaxies formed,” says Dr Christene Lynch from ASTRO 3D, the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions.

Dr Lynch is first author on a paper published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. She and her colleagues from Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research have reduced the background noise in their observations allowing them to home in on the elusive signal.

Media release from the National Science Week WA Co-ordinating Committee

National Science Week returns from 10 – 18 August, to reveal spectacular and breathtaking discoveries of science and technology through more than 1,000 events across Australia, 240 of which will be in Western Australia.

For Western Australians, the week will launch with the spectacular Moonboorli (Beyond), a free youth-focused event and gathering place for culture, ideas, knowledge and storytelling, presented by Propel Youth Arts WA at the State Library of Western Australia on Saturday 10 August.

Media release from the National Science Week WA Co-ordinating Committee

Celebrating the launch of National Science Week in 2019, Moonboorli (Beyond) is a special free event and gathering place for culture, ideas, knowledge and storytelling, presented by Propel Youth Arts WA at the State Library of Western Australia on Saturday 10 August.

Special guest Andrea Boyd will be sharing her experience as the only Australian International Space Station Flight Controller at the European Space Centre in Cologne, and her recent involvement in helping to create the new Australian Space Agency. Speaking at the Opening Ceremony and later in the day at a key-note presentation, this is her only appearance for National Science Week in WA.

Termites and ants are stockpiling gold in their mounds, new CSIRO research has found.

Australia’s smallest and most numerous mining prospectors can show us where new gold deposits are.

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A new land management tool using Aboriginal knowledge

Ngan’gi speakers know it’s time to look for freshwater crocodile eggs when the red kapok trees near the Northern Territory’s Daly River burst into flower.

This can occur at a different time each year, but the environmental link is solid.

A Darwin-based scientist has converted this link and other intimate Aboriginal knowledge of Australia’s landscape into an environmental management tool. [continue reading…]

From Marc Duldig, President of the Australian Institute of Physics Welcome to my bulletin covering physics news and events for September 2012 and beyond. In a busy September we have gravitational waves in Adelaide, ultra-cold atom optics in Victoria, a…

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.

Australian Institute of Physics President, Dr Marc Duldig, today welcomed the decision to share the SKA telescope between the competing bids. [continue reading…]

Welcome to my bulletin covering physics news and events for May 2012 and beyond. It’s a bumper month for nuclear physics: in Sydney, ANSTO is opening its doors for a tour of its particle accelerators and a talk by Vincent Smith from CERN. There’s also a public lecture in Tasmania April 30 by ANU physicist […]

Welcome back – this is my first 2012 bulletin for journalists interested in science.

• Australians are risking skin cancer to avoid nanoparticles
• No word on the $2 billion Square Kilometre Array yet
• Let us know if you’re heading to Vancouver for the AAAS conference
• Tasmanian-born nuclear physicist Allan Clark is home from the Large Hadron Collider
• TB – the threat to Australia and our region –  World TB Day on 24 March
• It’s not too late to register for the 2012 Australian Science Communicators National Conference in Sydney – 27-29 February
• Saving maths

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