black holes

Managing a data mountain

The world’s largest telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), is expected to generate more data in a single day, than the world does in a year at present. And even its prototype, the Australia SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), is expected to accumulate more information within six hours of being switched on than has been stored by all previous radio telescopes combined.

Such gargantuan streams of data require serious management, and that will be the job of the $80 million Pawsey High-Performance Computing Centre for SKA Science in Perth. Contracts for the construction of the building to house the Centre are expected to be let in December, 2010.

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Putting Einstein to the ultimate test

Einstein’s theories predicted them, and they could be everywhere throughout the universe. But they’ve never been directly detected. They are gravitational waves, unseen “ripples” in the fabric of space and time.

Scientists using CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope are leading the way in trying to find them, by studying signals coming from pulsars.

Pulsars are the collapsed cores of giant stars that have exploded. Spinning at up to hundreds of times per second, they emit highly-regular radio pulses that appear to flash on and off like a lighthouse. And that’s the key.

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Recording the impact of a super-massive black hole

At the centre of a nearby galaxy lurks an object of huge interest, a super-massive black hole. CSIRO scientists have used their radio telescopes to take a picture of the galaxy surrounding it, a task some thought could not be done, because of the sheer size and radio brightness of the scene. The image of [...]

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The destruction of a star

You have to be well prepared, quick and lucky to take a picture of an explosion, especially if that explosion occurred 11 billion years ago in a remote part of the Universe. Having the right equipment, plus friends in high places, certainly helps. And that’s exactly what the Zadko Telescope—managed by the University of Western [...]

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Spinning galaxies reveal missing matter

Australian astronomers have long been contributing to our understanding of a strange cosmological phenomenon—the Universe’s missing matter. In the early 1970s, Ken Freeman of the Australian National University (ANU) determined that spiral galaxies must contain more matter than we can see. He postulated that dark matter—an invisible material first proposed 40 years earlier—must make up [...]

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Fresh Science 2010

Each year we identify early-career scientists with a discovery and bring them to Melbourne for a communication boot camp. Here are some of their stories. More at www.freshscience.org.au Print your own lasers, lights and TV screens Imagine printing your own room lighting, lasers, or solar cells from inks you buy at the local newsagent. Jacek [...]

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How astronomy freed the computer from its chains

When you use a Wi-Fi network—at home, in the office or at the airport—you are using patented technology born of Australian astronomy.

Australia’s CSIRO created a technology that made the wireless LAN fast and robust. And their solution grew out of 50 years of radio astronomy and one man’s efforts to hear the faint radio whispers of exploding black holes.

Dr John O’Sullivan and his colleagues didn’t find the black holes. But they developed a way of cleaning up intergalactic radio wave distortion which became the key to fast, reliable Wi-Fi.

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