2015 to 2019 video archive

Professor Emeritus Anthony Klein: The physics of the Apollo moon mission in 1969: Do astronauts obey Kepler’s laws?

On this, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon missions, we look at the laws of physics that guided the Apollo astronauts safely to the Moon and back to Earth. Careful choice of the trajectories allowed for a ready return to Earth in the event of accidents, as was demonstrated with Apollo 13.  This lecture looks at how Isaac Newton was in the driver's seat and replays some of the expert commentary that went live-to-air on ABC-TV across Australia from Prof Klein.

Dr Helen Brand: Shining a light on solar system geology

With the arrival of spaceflight, humanity is learning about the geology of the planets and moons in the Solar System by visiting them. Meanwhile, back on Earth, scientists use exquisite machines called particle accelerators - such as the Australian Synchrotron - to build small pieces of a planet and shine light on planetary and lunar processes and origins. This talk will describe how we can use Victorian minerals to reveal the secrets of the Solar System.

Associate Professor Roger Rassool: Oxygen in Physics: From the Moon to the FREO2 project

The tidal forces from the Moon cause the ebb and flow of the sea and the slow lengthening of the lunar month on geological timescales recorded by oxygen compounds found in ancient corals.  The same research group that investigated this ancient oxygen has now developed a method of producing oxygen without electricity to treat sick babies in remote areas. This lecture looks at oxygen in the FREO2 project.

Professor David Jamieson: Physics and the Moon - The double planet: the physics of the earth-moon system

By the standards of the solar system the Earth has an unusually gigantic natural satellite.   The Moon raises tides on the Earth and the Earth continually modifies the Moon’s orbit. This lecture looks at the many peculiarities of the Earth-Moon system and some of the half-century old technology that got us there in 1969 for a closer look.

David Simpson: Quantum Mechanics and Biology: What are the prospects?

The rise of quantum technology brings with it exciting new opportunities in computation and communication. Now biology is set to benefit from this revolution. This lecture looks at how quantum technology and biology are coming together to provide new insights into how birds navigate and how living organisms assemble incredibly complex structures. In addressing these questions, we will explore where this technological revolution can take us in the coming decades.

Associate Professor Nicole Bell: The Rise of Cosmology and Particle Physics

Is our present understanding of the universe about to be replaced?

Over the past 50 years explanations for the origin and evolution of the universe have provided us with new insights into particle physics and the fundamental building blocks of nature.  But understanding the matter-antimatter asymmetry and the nature of dark matter remains elusive.  The next 50 years promise an even deeper convergence of particle physics and cosmology to answer the big questions requiring new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Dr Matthew Dolan: The Legacy of Stephen Hawking and the Prospects for the Great Reconciliation

This lecture looks at how understanding the very strange physics of black holes, where the fabric of space and time is stretched and distorted, may help us understand the big problem of how quantum mechanics about the very small and general relativity about the very large may be reconciled. Can we say our understanding of the laws of physics is complete? Will this long-overdue reconciliation be achieved in the near future.

13 July 2018

Professor David Jamieson: The Arrow of Time

Over the past fifty years, the Public Lectures in Physics have addressed advances in physics. The arrow of time points relentlessly from the past into the future.  But what is the arrow of time? What is the role of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics that compels entropy to always increase as time passes and so distinguishes the past from the future?

6 July 2018

Associate Professor Martin Sevior: Antimatter in space: the Alpha spectrometer on the International Space Station and the Cosmological implications

A giant magnet attached to the International Space Station is being used to look for antimatter particles in the cosmic rays that come from outside our galaxy.  Some theories suggest that these could come from antimatter galaxies or exotic cosmological process.  This lecture looks what these signals from space have told us about fundamental symmetries in physics.

28 July 2017

Dr Michele Trenti: The promise of nanosatellites: getting the University of Melbourne’s fast response telescope into space

21st-century technology allows a lot of sophisticated instrumentation to be packed into a small satellite that makes space accessible on a modest budget.  The SkyHopper project aims at launching Australia’s first space telescope to explore the distant and variable universe by looking at the infrared light that accompanies Gamma Ray Bursts, and hunt for potentially habitable exoplanets orbiting low mass stars.

21 July 2017

Dr Katie Mack: Humans in space: what are the human impacts of space travel and living on other planets?

Once an applicant for the astronaut program in the United States, astrophysicist Dr Mack has family connections to the space program.  This lecture looks at the potential for a permanent base to be established on Mars and in the more distant future visits to the outer planets and beyond.

14 July 2017

Professor David Jamieson: Methods for reaching extremely high speeds: what are the prospects for fast trips to the stars?

7 July 2017

The stars are very far away and most rockets are very slow by comparison.  Yet particle accelerators on Earth, including one of the earliest machines built in Melbourne, can routinely accelerate particles to exceptionally high speeds.  This lecture looks at the technology of high-speed travel, the energy budget and the effects of relativity.

Professor Stuart Wyithe: Einstein’s Gravity - Black Holes, Dark Matter and Gravitational Lensing

The General Theory of Relativity describes how mass distorts how we observe space and time. Two spectacular examples of this are provided through gravitational lensing and the predictions of black holes.

Gravitational lenses provide our strongest evidence for Dark Matter in the Universe. The gravity waves announced in 2016 came from a violent merger between two black holes around one billion years ago. The signal provides compelling evidence for the existence of black holes with masses of 10s to 100s of times the mass of the sun. Even larger, Super-Massive Black-Holes, with masses as high as 10 billion times the Sun seem to be ubiquitous in the centres of galaxies and to have played a key role in shaping our Universe.

Professor Stuart Wyithe from the School of Physics presents some of the puzzling relationships between gravity, black holes, galaxy formation and the spectacular warping of images from distant objects.

29 July 2016

Professor Elisabetta Barberio: Dark Matter and Gravity - Searching for missing mass at Stawell gold mine

Einstein’s General Theory of relativity provides an exceptionally accurate theory for gravity and matter at the largest scales. But observations of the way stars move subject to gravity in the galaxies show there is more gravity that can be accounted for by the visible stars. Gravity from invisible dark matter is proposed to explain the discrepancies. Despite concerted searches, no other trace of this dark matter has yet been found.

Professor Elisabetta Barberio from the School of Physics introduces a new observatory being built at the bottom of a gold mine at Stawell in central Victoria. Working with international partners, this observatory may find clear signals from the missing matter.

22 July 2016

Professor Matthew Bailes: Pulsars - Nature's naturally occurring gravitational laboratories

Pulsars are spinning dead stars that have long since consumed all their nuclear fuel and collapsed into super-dense remnants. Pulses of radiation from the spin can be used as extremely precise clocks with which to study extreme gravity.

Astronomers have discovered over 2,000 of these bizarre objects including a remarkable binary pulsar that provided the first experimental evidence for the emission of gravitational waves leading to the 1993 Nobel Prize.

Professor Matthew Bailes, from the Centre of Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology, will explain his latest work with pulsars and will perform a live cross to a giant radio telescope to see a pulsar and explain how fast pulsars can discover gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries.

15 July 2016

Professor Andrew Melatos: The Discovery of Gravity Waves: The Breakthrough by LIGO

The 2016 announcement of the experimental observation of gravity waves from space is the latest confirmation of Einstein’s General Theory and comes after decades of work developing the incredibly sophisticated observatory. Member of the international Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) consortium, Professor Andrew Melatos presents the work that led to the observation and the implications of our new ability to listen to the tempo of ripples in the fabric of space and time.

8 July 2016

Professor Ann Roberts: Light and matter - Bending light waves for new technology

Strange things happen when light interacts with nanoscale metallic objects. The wave-like nature of light can be manipulated to make ob- jects invisible or to permit imaging with unprecedented resolution or produce striking visual effects. The secrets of artworks and how they were made can be uncovered with laser probes. This lecture looks at how our mastery of the interaction of light and matter light gives us new ways of seeing (or not seeing) the world.

31 July 2015

Professor Stuart Wyithe: Distant light - Reading the signals from the oldest light in the universe

Our understanding of the origin and evolution of galaxies depends on our ability to see the most ancient light in the Universe. This ancient light comes from first galaxies that formed in the Universe and from the relic of the big bang itself. But there are many challenges seeing this light because of its extreme redshift arising from the expansion of the Universe. This lecture looks at the new observatories which will collect this ancient light and what it will tell us about the dark ages before the first galaxies and the structure of the Universe today.

24 July 2015

Dr Meg Urey: Prospecting with light - The search for supermassive black holes in galaxies

Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope show that black holes in the centres of galaxies have today reached “supermassive” size – ie, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Periods of growth are revealed by multi-wavelength light radiated as matter falls toward the black hole, especially the X-rays emitted just before the matter disappears into the hole. This lecture reports on a multi-wavelength census of super- massive black hole growth over the last 10 billion years, using X-ray, optical and infrared surveys to identify the fastest growing black holes regardless of obscuring gas or dust.

17 July 2015

Professor Ken Crozier: Nanoscale light - The surprising world of optical nanostructures

Advances in nanotechnology allow us to make optical nanostructures with surprising and technologically useful properties. Optical nanostructures can focus light so tightly that a single molecule can be detected, leading to interesting possibilities for chemical sensing. Optical nanostructures can be used to trap small objects, e.g. cells, bacteria and viruses, presenting scientists with a new tool for understanding biology. An optical nanostructure can appear completely different in colour to a solid piece of the same material. This lecture looks at the amazing world of optical nanostructures, and potential applications.

10 July 2015

Professor David Jamieson: Understanding Light - from the Arab scholars of the 11th C to Maxwell and Einstein

The great “Book of Optics” written by the Arab scholar Al Hazen between 1011 and 1021 set humanity on a new journey to understanding the nature of light and its applications to human vision and technology. But it took until the genius of James Clerk Maxwell to show us that light arises from electricity and magnetism and for Einstein to show how light is bound up with the fabric of space and time. This lecture looks at the emergence of our understanding of the mystery of light.

3 July 2015