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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An incredible experience discussing science for the National Science Quiz hosted by no less than Charlie Pickering! On the panel were some of Australia's top minds, Prime Minister Science Prize winner Terry Speed, science communicator Tanya Ha, Victoria's Lead Scientist Leonie Walsh and ABC's Red Symons. My favourite question we had to answer was why a wet towel looks darker than a dry one (the water has a higher refractive index and bends the reflected light that would ordinarily reach your eye and hence means it would look darker).
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I was able to spend some time on the astoundingly ambitious Breakthrough Starshot mission to Alpha Centauri (which I've written about in Cosmos Magazine and theconversation). A private enterprise initiative that will see some incredible technologies pursued to try and reach a star within a human lifetime. Then onto a critical tech development as NASA technology to get CO2 from the Martian atmosphere finds its way into craft beer... Finally a little shout out for the ESO observation of the Fornax cluster.
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The incredible success of Elon Musk's SpaceX in landing on a barge at sea opens the way to potentially reusable rockets, slashing the costs of space travel. The same Falcon 9 had launched a potentially groundbreaking new space module, a blow-up (or inflatable) habitat by Bigelow Aerospace known as BEAM that has now docked with the International Space Station.
I was lucky enough to get to write for ABC The Drum about this, as well as speak to TripleJ Hack about what this might mean for the future of space exploration.
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A strange opportunity to speak, well, about myself. Usually I only chat to the media about the latest breaking science but this time the Sydney Morning Herald asked how I got into astrophysics and my thoughts on STEM education. Suffice to say I'm pretty keen on everyone getting to learn at least a little science!
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A fun chat on ABC Breakfast News TV about 500,000 never-before seen stars found by the Hubble Space Telescope in the centre of our galaxy, incredible observations of a 10 million year old star with planets forming (one at the same distance from it as the Earth is from the Sun!) and an inflatable space room for the International Space Station launching this weekend!
I gave a full write up of it in theconversation too..!
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I dragged the tone down slightly by discussing ESA's hunt for life on Mars with ExoMars trying to sniff out signs of life in the Martian atmosphere by searching for methane as, on Earth at least, this gas can be produced by life (typically in the ‘farts’ of sheep and cows as methanogens form it in their guts) however it’s also formed by geological processes so it’s not clear cut, yet..!
I also chatted about amazing new Hubble images of 9 monstrously large stars and gave a plug for the planetarium show Capturing the Cosmos to be released tonight.
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What an incredible year it’s been for Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko orbiting 5440 times around the Earth and 340 days later they have traveled a distance equal to that too Mars. This is the test needed to know what humanity will experience getting to the red planet and the science from this has only started. As a control sample there’s Scott's twin brother Mark Kelly, who offers the best (though even as an identical twin not perfect) comparison to try to observe changes in Scott’s genetic profile due to space.
Also a big shout out to NASA's awesome Hubble Space Telescope finding the most distant galaxy. Madness that it’s forming so vigorously when the universe was just a few hundred million years old.
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Speaking to 4000 inspiring primary students from across the State was an incredible honour. I tried to tell them what makes a good leader (listening!), how to succeed in their career (passion!) and what’s the coolest job (astronomer!) I was alongside the YGAP co-founder Elliot Costello, Dr Paul McIntosh from one of my favourite supercomputers MASSIVE and Cat Cafe star Anita Loughran. All people who have succeeded against incredible odds. The event was organised by Halogen and the scale blew me away, it was a long day and yet the questions at the end were still so impressive and insightful. I wish this event had been around when I was young but then again I probably wouldn’t have been good enough to get in then!
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TAO is an outrageously ambitious project spearheaded by Swinburne's Prof Darren Croton to bridge the gap between observations of our universe and those we simulate (such as the ones I create). Ideally astronomers log onto TAO and select their favourite telescope and strategy for viewing (stare for a long time at a small region, or briefly over a wide path of sky, the former lets you see fainter objects while the latter gives you only the brightest ones). Then you get an output that is identical in format to the one you took with that telescope in reality (including all known issues with signal to noise and interference etc). This makes the comparison between what we predict and observe as close as possible and hence maximise the lessons we can learn from seeing out into the universe.
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Fun way to start a week chatting to ABC Breakfast News about NASA's WFIRST mission, a former spy satellite now repurposed as a new wide-eye Hubble space telescope! I also explained how we measured the atmosphere of a (roasting hot) super Earth for the first time (it's cyanide, don't move there) and how the Sun destroyed potentially dangerous asteroids by baking them into oblivion..!
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The discovery of gravitational waves is legitimately one that will be remembered for generations. We are now able to see into the universe with an entirely new sense beyond our conventional telescopes, as far removed from sight as sound. A huge day and I ended up chatting to The Project, Channel 7’s Weekend Sunrise as well as mamamia, VICE, Cosmos and theconversation but seriously I could keep on for weeks, this is the biggest discovery that I’ve witnessed in my scientific career.
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The reanalysis of Apollo era moon rocks show they are identical to those of Earth supporting the theory that an early Earth was slammed in a head-on collision by a Mars-sized world we call Theia. The fragments from this would one day become the Moon!
I also mentioned a newly discovered super-cold ‘space pancake’ and the boomerang gas cloud.
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Caltech researchers led by Prof Mike Brown who formerly demoted Pluto have published tentative results of a ninth planet in our Solar System, and at ten times the mass of Earth it’s in no danger of not qualifying for planet status if real. Fainter than a lightbulb on the Moon and moving each second on the sky about a human hair’s width held at 100km it will be challenging to find against the 100 million stars of the Milk Way behind it’s approximate area.
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I got a little carried away with the ridiculous scale of the latest explosion in space, outshine the entire Milky Way twenty times over. We have no idea how to produce this level of explosion. Then there was brief chat about SpaceX and its unfortunate crash on a sea barge then a final rant about the wonders of Pluto!
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The Project invited me on the show to chat about an astounding discovery... A new tiny faint point of light appeared in the sky, 10000 times faint than could be seen by the naked eye, but when we realised it was 3.8 BILLION lightyears away it was clear that it must be astoundingly bright to even reach this faint level. This was the brightest supernovae ever recorded - ASAS-SN-15lh
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One of my great passions in life is reading, and I jumped at the chance to wax lyrical about my top books I’d read this past year on Radio National. Sarah Dingle was a champ, allowing me to get a bit carried away with some of the themes of the books...
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2016 is shaping up to be an incredible year for space exploration with ESA’s ExoMars spacecraft heading to Mars, NASA’s Juno mission reaching Jupiter on 4th July and an entirely new type of telescope called LIGO looking out into the universe for Einstein’s final prediction Gravitational Waves..!
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After an outstanding year of science and space events I grabbled with the thorny issue of summarising my highlights to a top 10 for theconversation (I could have easily listed another ten!) Unsurprisingly the main story of the year was Pluto.
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I chatted to Scott and Kumi about the upcoming Geminids meteor shower, why it’s so good this year as well as where and when would be best to watch. If you want more details I wrote about this online with approximate times for Australia.
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