Short Talks
4.30pm - 5pm
Galactic Guesswork — “Estimating Everything from Piano Tuners to Alien Civilizations
How many piano tuners are there in Chicago? How many aliens in the Galaxy? We'll show you how to estimate both these things using simple statistics - and there could be many civilizations out there for us to find. So where are they? Why haven't we found them?
So You Like Science at School – What Now?
Enjoy science at school but have no idea what to do with it? What subjects should you take? What opportunities exist right now? What does a science career actually look like? Hear from an early-career Stellar Astrophysicist (who sat the HSC not so long ago!) and a current High School Physics teacher for an honest, practical look at what it actually takes to turn a science interest into a career — and why the answer might surprise you.
5.15pm - 5.45pm
Measuring the Unknown: How Uncertainty Shapes Our View of the Universe
Take part in an interactive journey through randomness spin the lottery wheel, and watch the Galton board in action as we reveal how simple probability concepts lead to the bell curve and uncover the nature of uncertainty. We then carry this intuition into astronomy, where scientists predict planetary motion and asteroid paths as ranges of possible outcomes.
Space Isn’t Just For Astronomers!
Astronomy asks the biggest questions about our universe, but how do we actually find the answers? Astronomy helps us understand all things within the universe, but engineering is what allows us to explore it. From telescopes to satellites to rovers, modern space discovery is made possible by engineers who turn ideas into reality. This talk will discuss the possibilities of engineering in astronomy, from a student who is studying astronomy and mechatronic engineering at Macquarie University. During my time here, I have had many opportunities in both fields which has only boosted my passion and enthusiasm to combine astronomy and engineering in my future career. Macquarie University’s on-campus observatory has allowed me to work hands-on with telescopes as a member of the Association for Astronomy, while my engineering degree has allowed me to get involved with interesting projects, such as satellite tracking. Pursuing both engineering and astronomy unlocks an understanding of not just what we want to discover, but how we can make these discoveries possible.
6pm - 6.30pm
We are made of Stardust
Have you ever wondered where you, me, and everything around us came from?
In this fun and interactive talk, we’ll go on an exciting journey: from tiny atoms to giant stars. We’ll discover how stars are like cosmic factories that create all the elements inside our bodies, like the iron in your blood and the calcium in your bones!
We’ll explore:
The life stories of stars
How stars make the building blocks of life
Why you are literally made of star-stuff
By the end, you’ll never look at the night sky the same way again, because it’s not just about stars… it’s a story about you.
The sound of silence: Listening to the Universe!
We are most familiar with what the Universe looks like in “normal” light. However, the world around us—our Sun, the planets, the stars beyond, the galaxies and even the leftovers from the Big Bang that started it all—is abuzz with sounds; sounds that we cannot hear directly, although we can transfer the signals we receive from this wide variety of astronomical sources to the range accessible to human hearing. Sometimes, signals are mistaken for the telltale signs of alien civilisations. We will explore the unheard side of the Universe – listen rather than look!
6.45pm - 7.15pm
Space Tech in Your Pocket: Cosmic Innovation in Everyday Life
When most of us picture space, we imagine rockets, astronauts, and sleek futuristic ships. But the real surprise is this: aerospace technology isn’t just out there in the sky — it’s woven into your daily life. It’s in your phone, your car, your kitchen, and even the way you navigate the world. This talk explores how the tools built for spatial exploration ended up making life better for everyone on Earth.
Cosmic Flashlights: uncovering distant galaxies secrets
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe, releasing more energy in a few seconds than our Sun will produce in its entire lifetime. Even though they are incredibly bright, their light does not travel to us unaltered.As this light moves across space, it passes through vast clouds of tiny cosmic dust particles. These dust grains are the building blocks of stars, planets, and even life—but they are extremely difficult to study directly because they are so faint and spread out.
In this talk, we will explore how the afterglow of gamma-ray bursts acts like a cosmic flashlight. By studying how this light changes as it travels through space, astronomers can uncover the hidden properties of cosmic dust in distant galaxies.
This allows us to use some of the most extreme events in the Universe to better understand some of its most delicate and invisible ingredients.
7.30pm - 8pm
Cosmic Distance Illusions – Galaxy Morphology Across Time
Astronomers learn a lot about how galaxies grow and change by studying their shapes — whether they look like smooth balls of stars, flat spirals like the Milky Way, or messy, irregular blobs. A galaxy’s shape tells us how it forms stars, how it interacts with its neighbours, and how it evolves over billions of years.But there’s a catch: when we look at galaxies that are very far away, they appear faint and blurry simply because of the huge distances involved. That blur can trick us. It can make different types of galaxies look more similar than they really are, and it can distort the patterns of light we use to measure their structure.
So are we seeing galaxies as they truly are, or are we being fooled by the by the effects of distance, light propagation, and the expansion of the Universe.
In this talk, we’ll explore how astronomers study galaxy shapes and how distance, dimming, and blur can bias what we think we’re seeing across cosmic time.
Not Always Wrong
What is the black thing at the end of Fortnite X? Can Homer Simpson be partially spaghettified by a black hole? What is the real physics behind the mission to Tao Ceti e (aka Adrian)? Starting from special relativity and moving toward curved spacetime and black holes, this talk uses scenes from some of the most iconic — and occasionally most hated — films, games, and cartoons to explore what gravity actually does to space, time, and perception. The intuition is often wrong: the shortest path becomes curved, clocks disagree with each other, and even the ideas of “down” and “out” become slippery. Common sense, paired with some of the scientifically — and often graphically — best sci fi visuals, will help us understand what is going on in curved space.8.15pm - 8.45pm
Cosmic Hide-and-seek? How we detect what space tries to hide
The universe is full of objects that are too far away, too faint, or too small for even our best telescopes to capture in sharp detail. So how do we learn what they really look like? In this talk, I will show how astronomers combine powerful telescopes with clever imaging techniques to reveal structures that would otherwise remain hidden. From discs of gas and dust around stars, where planets may form, to close pairs of stars surrounded by material they have shed, astronomy often means learning to extract real information from blurred and limited data. It is a story of how astronomers turn blurred images into scientific insight, reveal the almost invisible, and use it to better understand our universe.
Does time slow down at the edge of the Universe
With a watchful eye and a sensitive enough telescope, every night we observe stars in distant galaxies exploding in what are called supernovae. This is expected every once in a while within each galaxy, and each one gives us a wealth of information to understand the Universe.The problem is, those stellar explosions in very distant galaxies seem to take a lot longer to happen — in our local universe, they may take weeks but far far away this can turn into months. Does this hint at a flaw in our understanding of stars and their explosions, or is there something else warping our view of time?
Keynote lecture
7.30pm - 8.15pm
Artemis and beyond – humankind’s future on the Moon
We are currently in a time of unprecedented access to space, with mind-blowing satellite constellations, a score of interplanetary probes and two continuously crewed space stations. Yet in this flurry of activity there are intriguing echoes of a long-gone era. Six decades ago, the Apollo project enthralled the world – today we are witnessing a new venture with ambitions that could hardly be more different from Apollo’s flags and footprints. Artemis aims to achieve nothing less than a permanent human presence on the Moon. Join Fred Watson as he unpicks the past, present and future of lunar exploration in this entertaining and copiously illustrated talk.Wallumattagal campus
Balaclava Road
Macquarie University NSW 2109
City campus
Angel Place
Level 24, 123 Pitt Street
Sydney NSW 2000
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Macquarie University is located on the land of the Wallumattagal clan of the Dharug people. We pay respects to the Elders and knowledge holders who have, and continue to share their wisdom and knowledges, nurturing and sustaining our environments, cultures and education.
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