Category Archives: Uncategorized

EU22, Uncategorized

ESO and our galactic cousins

Australian astronomers have been awarded time on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). 

It will enable them to lead international teams of astronomers to perform deep observations of the Milky Way’s galactic cousins and reveal the physics of star formation and galaxy evolution in some of the most massive structures in the Universe. 

The projects are led by Jesse van de Sande from the University of Sydney, and by Barbara Catinella and Luca Cortese from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research at the University of Western Australia. The VLT is in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, one of the driest places in the world.

Image credit: John Colosimo (colosimophotography.com)/ESO

2022, ASTRO3D, Uncategorized

President Biden to release first pics from the $US10 billion James Webb Space Telescope Tuesday 12 July

What will Australians see with Webb?

Aussie astronomers available for interviews in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra.

They’re using Webb to look for the first stars, the first galaxies, baby planets, massive black holes.

Over the past 30 years, Hubble has transformed science and culture, revealing a Universe of 200 billion galaxies. Webb will see further, solving today’s mysteries and creating new ones.

Image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Courtesy of NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

On Tuesday morning Joe Biden will release ‘the first picture’ then NASA will release a suite of images early Wednesday morning from the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble.

Nearly 40 researchers across Australia are eagerly awaiting data from web for their projects. Many of them are available to talk on Tuesday about what they hope to see with Webb and about their reaction to the first pictures.

Much of the Webb data is flowing back to Earth through Tidbinbilla, and some comes from an instrument designed by Peter Tuthill at the University of Sydney. He is relieved and excited. “This is a day I have been looking forward to for a big part of my career. Everything about the Webb is so over-the-top audacious – from the titanic articulated mirror down to its orbit out in the cold voids of interplanetary space.”

Continue reading President Biden to release first pics from the $US10 billion James Webb Space Telescope Tuesday 12 July →
2019, Fresh Science, Uncategorized

Device makes electric vehicle charging a two-way street

Image Credit: @mikebirdy /Pexels

New tech means cars can power houses, as well as the other way round.

Seyedfoad Taghizadeh, Macquarie University

A new device turns electric vehicles into chargers for houses and stranded cars.

Researchers led by Seyedfoad Taghizadeh from Australia’s Macquarie University are looking to commercialise the technology, which may significantly increase the appeal of the vehicles.

Continue reading Device makes electric vehicle charging a two-way street →
2019, Uncategorized

Family matters in autism outcomes

Family matters in autism outcomes

Lauren Lawson, La Trobe Univcersity

Cognition is influenced by siblings, researchers find.

Autistic children with autistic siblings have better cognition than those who are the only family member with the condition, researchers have found.

Importantly, the outcome does not depend on birth order.

Although previous studies have identified that having autistic siblings leads to better cognition for individual children with the condition, it was assumed that the order in which the children were born was a significant factor.

Continue reading Family matters in autism outcomes →
2019, Fresh Science, Uncategorized

Better emergency responses by removing social bots

Image credit: Mehwish Nasim

Filtering out social bots can help critical response teams see what’s happening in real time

Mehwish Nasim, University of Adelaide

Researchers have created an algorithm that distinguishes between misinformation and genuine conversations on Twitter, by detecting messages churned out by social bots.

Dr Mehwish Nasim and colleagues at the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Adelaide say the algorithm will make it easier for emergency services to detect major events such as civil unrest, natural disasters, and influenza epidemics in real time.

“When something really big is going on, people tweet a huge amount of useful information,” says Mehwish.

Continue reading Better emergency responses by removing social bots →
Uncategorized

And then there was light: looking for the first stars in the Universe

Researchers hunt for a 12-billion-year-old signal that marks the end of the post Big Bang “dark age”.

In this image of the Epoch of Reionisation, neutral hydrogen, in red, is gradually ionizsed by the first stars, shown in white.Credit: Paul Geil and Simon Mutch

Astronomers are closing in on a signal that has been travelling across the Universe for 12 billion years, bringing them nearer to understanding the life and death of the very earliest stars.

In a paper on the preprint site arXiv and soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team led by Dr Nichole Barry from Australia’s University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) reports a 10-fold improvement on data gathered by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) – a collection of 4096 dipole antennas set in the remote hinterland of Western Australia.

Continue reading And then there was light: looking for the first stars in the Universe →
Uncategorized

Explore Australian science

Previous editions of Stories of Australian Science and our other publications

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