International Year of Astronomy 2009

Speakers: Professor Michael Drinkwater, Dr. Kevin Pimbblet, and Dr Tamara Davis, UQ

Did the Big Bang happen? How can we be sure? What evidence is there at the present time for the Big Bang happening? What is dark energy? How is it connected to the Big Bang? How are astronomers currently looking for dark energy?

In this presentation, three astronomers from the University of Queensland will give an entertaining tour of these and other modern Big Questions in science with a theatrical flavour. In particular, they will describe their work on an ambitious 4-year Australian project to measure dark energy.

Venue: TBA

You are invited to join Professor Brian Boyle and Dr Joel Gilmore for an evening of discovery and discussion.

WHEN: Thursday 17 September from 6.30 pm

WHERE: Regatta Hotel - Winterford Room (Upstairs), Coronation Drive, Toowong

The event is Free (No RSVP)

Stretching over a continent and comprised of over 5000 antennas, the Square Kilometre Array is proposed to be the world's largest radio telescope and one of the most ambitious pieces of scientific infrastructure ever built. It will address some of the key questions of 21st century astronomy and physics and act as an scientific icon for generations to come.

I will outline the international project which aims to build this telescope by the end of next decade, and describe some of the transformational scientific projects that will be done with the telescope. I will also describe current SKA activities in Australia developments, including construction of the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope at the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory in Western Australia over the coming four years. With Southern Africa, Australia is currently one of two countries short-listed to host this $2.5b telescope.

Prof Brian Boyle Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO

Come along, bring your questions about the Square Kilometer Array, and join in the discussion with Professor Boyle and Dr Joel Gilmore. Guests are welcome to purchase drinks at the bar throughout the evening. These events are suitable for students accompanied by an adult. Please feel free to forward to friends, family and colleagues.

Brisbane Symphony Orchestra starring astronomer Dominique Proust on organ.

Venue: Lake Kawana Community Centre, behind Stockland Park on Sportsmans Parade, Bokarina, parallel to the Nicklin Way. Take either Main Drive or Meridan Street to reach us.

Brisbane Symphony Orchestra starring astronomer Dominique Proust on organ.

Venue: St John's Cathedral, Brisbane

presented by Dr. Michael Murphy, Swinburne University

What are the laws of Nature? Are they really hard-and-fast "laws", or just "local by-laws" for the tiny region of the Universe we live in? These questions are among the most basic we can ask, and also some of the oldest. This talk will explore how astronomers are trying to answer these questions of fundamental physics. One fun way is to observe quasars - super-massive black holes sucking in stars and gas from the centers of galaxies in the extremely distant Universe - with the biggest telescopes on Earth. Excitingly, Dr Murphy's results to date suggest that some laws of Nature might have been different billions of years ago, in the early Universe, before our Solar System and even our Milky Way galaxy existed. Of course, these results are under intense scrutiny and the story continues.

Michael Murphy is an observational astronomer studying the Universe's properties and evolution on the largest possible scales, i.e. cosmology. He completed his PhD in physics at the University of NSW in Sydney and then spent 5 years at the University of Cambridge in the UK as a research fellow. He returned to Australia in 2007 to take up a lectureship at Swinburne University and began a QEII Research Fellowship there in 2008, funded by the Australian Government.

Venue: Ithaca Auditorium, Brisbane City Hall

For more information visit BrisScience website

You are invited to join Dr Charley Lineweaver and Dr Joel Gilmore for an evening of discovery and discussion.

WHEN: Thursday 17 September from 6.30 pm

WHERE: Regatta Hotel - Winterford Room (Upstairs), Coronation Drive, Toowong

The event is Free (No RSVP)

Our current ideas of the very early universe are based on quantum cosmology. These ideas suggest that our Universe may be embedded in a larger hierarchy of parallel universes called the Multiverse. Sounds crazy but I will try to explain why it makes some sense. We would like to know how or why the constants of physics (e.g. the speed of light, the strength of gravity, the ratio of the proton mass to the electron mass, the cosmological constant) have the values that they do have. For some cosmologists, these constants have special values in our universe which seem to make it “fit for life”. In the context of a multiverse, each universe might have different values for these constants, and then anthropic selection could explain the apparent fitness of our universe to host life. Without a multiverse, we just have to accept the constants as given. I will try to describe possible tests for the existence of the Multiverse.

Dr Charley Lineweaver is from the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics/Research School of Earth Science at the Australian National University.

Come along, bring your questions about the Universe/ Multiverse, and join in the discussion with Dr Lineweaver and Dr Joel Gilmore. Guests are welcome to purchase drinks at the bar throughout the evening. These events are suitable for students accompanied by an adult. Please feel free to forward to friends, family and colleagues.

presented by Professor David Jamieson, School of Physics, University of Melbourne

With two small polished pieces of glass in his innovative new telescope, Galileo triggered a revolution in the way humanity sees its place in the cosmos. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the first time Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens. In the last few months of 1609 and the first months of 1610 he made an avalanche of astounding new discoveries that completely overturned the traditional views of the Earth’s place in the cosmos. This lecture looks at Galileo’s technological breakthrough with the invention of his astronomical telescope and investigates the new discoveries and knowledge that it produced.

Some of these discoveries are well known like the discovery of the moons of Jupiter and the lunar landscape. But there is a surprise drawn from the pages of Galileo’s logbooks of 1612 and 1613. He notes the position of a “fixed star” that does not exist in any star chart because it is the planet Neptune which Galileo observed 234 years before its official discovery. Did he know this “fixed star” was a planet? If so, this would be the first discovery of a new planet by humanity since deep antiquity. His notes suggest he saw Neptune move and computer simulations show the precision of his observations. This lecture will review the evidence.

Venue: Parnell Building (7) Lecture Theatre 222

For more information visit www.physics.uq.edu.au/colloquium

Speaker: Professor Norman Heckenberg

In honour of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, this talk will deal with orreries, telluria, planetaria, cometaria, and other mechanical models of the solar system.
Professor Norman Heckenberg is director of the Physics Museum at The University of Queensland and was the designer of the orrery used in the sci-fi movie Pitch Black.

Venue: Parnell Building (7) Lecture Theatre 222

For more information visit Tools of Science website

Speaker: Professor David Jamieson, School of Physics, University of Melbourne

With two small polished pieces of glass in his innovative new telescope, Galileo triggered a revolution in the way humanity sees its place in the cosmos. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the first time Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens. In the last few months of 1609 and the first months of 1610 he made an avalanche of astounding new discoveries that completely overturned the traditional views of the Earth's place in the cosmos. This lecture looks at Galileo's technological breakthrough with the invention of his astronomical telescope and investigates the new discoveries and knowledge that it produced.

Some of these discoveries are well known like the discovery of the moons of Jupiter and the lunar landscape. But there is a surprise drawn from the pages of Galileo's logbooks of 1612 and 1613. He notes the position of a "fixed star" that does not exist in any star chart because it is the planet Neptune which Galileo observed 234 years before its official discovery. Did he know this "fixed star" was a planet? If so, this would be the first discovery of a new planet by humanity since deep antiquity. His notes suggest he saw Neptune move and computer simulations show the precision of his observations. This lecture will review the evidence.

Venue: Brisbane City Hall, Ithaca Auditorium

For more information visit BrisScience website

Speakers: Professor Michael Drinkwater, Dr. Kevin Pimbblet, and Dr Tamara Davis, UQ

How do we know that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old? Why is Pluto no longer considered to be a planet? Do we have a theory that can explain the origin of the solar system? What kinds of planets have we found orbiting other stars? Have our theories of planet formation held up against the discovery of these distant solar systems? In this presentation, three astronomers from the University of Queensland will give an entertaining and theatrical tour of these and other modern Big Questions in science.

Venue: Brisbane City Hall, Ithaca Auditorium

For more information visit BrisScience website

Speaker: Nicholas Menicucci from the Perimeter Institute in Canada

I show that entanglement can be used to detect spacetime curvature. Quantum fields in the Minkowski vacuum are entangled with respect to local field modes. This entanglement can be swapped to spatially separated quantum systems using standard local couplings. A single, inertial field detector in the exponentially expanding (de Sitter) vacuum responds as if it were bathed in thermal radiation in a Minkowski universe. Using two inertial detectors, interactions with the field in the thermal case will entangle cerOctober 20, 2009 rresponding de Sitter case. The two universes can thus be distinguished by their entangling power.

Venue: Parnell Building (7), Lecture Theatre 222

For more information visit www.physics.uq.edu.au/colloquium