Victoria's state government will contribute $5 million to build the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory.
The funding has been announced by Victoria’s state Minister for Regional Development, Jaclyn Symes, and matches the federal government’s funding commitment confirmed in April. The laboratory will be built one kilometre underground, within the Stawell Gold Mine, as a bespoke excavated cavity 30 metres long, 10 metres wide and 10 metres high. It will provide ultra-low background research facilities (free from the particles that form background radiation) needed in the ground-breaking search for dark matter.
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My piece in ABC The Drum on what the 2016 budget means for science in Australia. Essentially things continue as we had hoped from earlier in the year with welcome long-term sustained funding. There was a welcome one-year extension to the Australian Astronomical Observatory delaying the end of that world-leading telescope facility by a year to 2019/20 which it is hoped will give time for a sustained and long term solution to astronomical funding in the nation.
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It was a busy day preparing for the Government’s new innovation policy, I chatted about what I hope to see and also what I thought would happen. Then I was able to sneak in some tips on viewing the Geminids meteor shower next week as well as some astonishing new images from the recent New Horizons flyby of Pluto.
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