A Nobel Cause

Affiliation(s): University of Queensland

Session details: Saturday, 2012-04-06 23:10:00, TBA

Abstract

Being part of the research team unravelling the mysteries of the accelerating universe took a further exciting turn in 2011 when the man at the top, Brian Schmidt, was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for this outstanding project. And of course, if the boss is off to Stockholm, it would be wrong for the team from UQ to miss out on the action …

Biography

Michael is Professor and Head of Physics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. His research is in two main areas. He is still investigating the origin of the strange UCD galaxies now found in several galaxy clusters, and he is also Principal Investigator of the “WiggleZ” Dark Energy Survey, a massive four-year project on the Anglo-Australian Telescope which will constrain models of dark energy. Dr Tamara Davis is an astrophysicist from the University of Queensland. She specialises in interpreting astrophysical observations in terms of their implications for fundamental physics. She performed cosmological analyses for two prominent international supernova surveys, and has now returned to Australia to work with the WiggleZ dark energy survey, making the largest ever 3D map of the distribution of galaxies in the universe. The aim of all these surveys is to understand our fundamental laws of nature, and she uses the data to test new theories of gravity and quantum physics.