Join some of our leading astronomers and physicists in this series of special lectures about ten “big ideas” in modern astronomy and physics. Exploring topics from subatomic physics to black holes and cosmology, and discussing some of the latest research, this course will bring you up-to-date on recent discoveries in our understanding of the universe. An evening of star viewing in the Blue Mountains is included. Details of the excursion to the Blue Mountains will be confirmed in class. Participants will need to make their own travel arrangements and may wish to arrange car pooling with other participants in the course.

Course Content

Week 1: Matt Francis: The Amazing and Expanding Universe: From the Big Bang to Heat Death

Dr Matthew Francis obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney before working in Trieste, Italy. His research interests include dark energy, the formation of structure and the expansion of the Universe. He currently works in the Bureau of Metrology trying to predict space weather.

Week 2: Naomi McClure-Griffiths: Exploring the Ecosystem of the Milky Way

Dr Naomi McClure-Griffiths is an OCE Science Leader at CSIRO Astronomy & Space Science. Her research has dramatically reshaped our knowledge of the structure and evolution of the Milky Way. Naomi’s studies of the Milky Way over the past ten years have led to the discovery of a new spiral arm, and changed many long-held ideas about the evolution of our galaxy. Naomi is the Principal Investigator on the Galactic All Sky Survey, which has created the most sensitive and high resolution all-sky atlas of hydrogen and is now co-leading the Galactic Australian SKA Pathfinder Survey (GASKAP) to study the evolution of gas in the Milky Way.

Week 3: Stephen Bartlett: Einstein, Entanglement, and the Exotic Quantum World

Dr Stephen Bartlett leads the Quantum Information Theory research group in Physics at the University of Sydney. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Toronto in Canada in 2000, and then began researching quantum computation and quantum information theory in 2000 at Macquarie University and the University of Queensland, before coming to Sydney University. Stephen’s current interests include quantum information theory, quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and the foundations of quantum physics.

Week 4: Tim Bedding: The Discovery of Extrasolar Planets

Dr Tim Bedding obtained his PhD at the University of Sydney. He spent two years in Munich working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), before returning to the university as a lecturer in 1994. His research centres on making high-precision measurements of stellar oscillations, a technique known as asteroseismology. This involves using the oscillation frequencies of stars to probe their internal structures in a method analogous to the seismic study of the Earth.

Week 5: Bryan Gaensler: Magnets in the Sky

Bryan Gaensler is an ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Physics at The University of Sydney. After obtaining his PhD in physics from The University of Sydney in 1998, he held positions as a Hubble Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as the Clay Fellow at the Smithsonian Institition and then as an Associate Professor at Harvard University, before returning home to Sydney in 2006. His current research interests focus on the origin of magnetism in the Universe, and the demography of neutron stars and black holes in our Milky Way. In July 2010, Bryan was awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship.
h4. Week 6: Kevin Varvell: Probing the Secrets of the Universe Using Particles
Dr Kevin Varvell is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics. After being fascinated by the subatomic world as an undergraduate in Perth, he obtained a DPhil in the subject in the UK and has since then been chasing the secrets of the fundamental building blocks of matter through experiments at CERN, Fermilab an KEK.

Week 7: David Reilly: Quantum Computing

Week 8: Tara Murphy: Extreme events: Exploring the Dynamic Universe with the Square Kilometre Array

Tara Murphy is a Lecturer in Astroinformatics at the University of Sydney, working jointly in astronomy and IT. After completing her undergraduate degree at Sydney she moved to the UK to complete her PhD at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. Her current area of research is developing intelligent algorithms to solve the data challenges of next generation radio telescopes, which will produce gigabytes of data per second. In particular, she is leading the VAST collaboration: “A Survey for Variables and Slow Transients” on the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, currently under construction in Western Australia.

Week 9: Scott Croom: Dark Energy and the Sound of the Cosmos

Dr Scott Croom obtained his PhD at the University of Durham in 1997. He continued at Durham in a postdoctoral position, and then moved to Imperial College in 1999. In 2000 he took up a post at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, before moving to the University of Sydney in 2007. Scott is one of the key members of the team that produced the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey using the 2-degree Field instrument at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. His research interests include attempting to determine cosmological parameters from measurements of structure in the distant Universe, as well as trying to understand the physical mechanisms behind quasar formation and evolution.

Week 10: Helen Johnston: The Private Life of a Proton

Dr Helen Johnston obtained her PhD at the California Institute of Technology. Subsequently she obtained postdoctoral appointments in The Netherlands, at the Anglo-Australian Observatory and at the University of Sydney. Her research interests are the study of neutron stars and black holes, in binary systems and in the centres of galaxies.

Excursion

Details of the excursion to the Blue Mountains will be confirmed in class. Participants will need to make their own travel arrangements and may wish to arrange car pooling with other participants in the course. This component will be conducted by John O’Byrne, who is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Academic Programs in Physics at the University of Sydney.

Suitable for

A basic knowledge of astronomy is assumed.