Short talks

5.15pm - 5.45pm

How many places can we make a planet? 

The search for exoplanets has revealed a strong diversity of planetary systems, expanding our traditional understanding of planet formation. This talk will highlight the various environments where planets may form, from the well-established proto-planetary disks around young stars to circumbinary disks around dying stars.

We discuss recent studies that are shedding light on the possibility of "second-generation" planets forming from the material ejected by these 'evolved' stars. This talk will highlight the dynamic and multifaceted nature of planet formation, showcasing the research that is reshaping our understanding of where planets can exist.

Jellyfish in the Sky   

By cosmic standards, our Milky Way Galaxy is average. Galaxies, like us, are hugely affected by their environment, and some galaxies can really feel the sting of a crowded environment. Galaxies are made up of hundreds of billions of stars, gas, and dust, bound together by gravity but, in crowded environments, this nice assembly of stars, gas, and dust can be disrupted.  

Some galaxies have their gas ripped away from them as they move at high speeds through their home, leaving trailing tendrils of gas resembling jellyfish tentacles. These jellyfish galaxies live mostly in galaxy clusters (large collections of multiple galaxies) and while galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally stable structures in the Universe, they can be harsh environments for a galaxy to grow up in. 

Like their oceanic counterparts, jellyfish galaxies are mysterious and still largely unexplored. Together, we are going to discover all we know about them so far, and what we are still uncovering!  

Investigating the Chemical Fingerprints of Dying Binary Stars

Most stars in the Universe are part of binary systems - two stars orbiting each other. In their final stages, Sun-like stars in such systems often produce large discs of gas and dust, creating a unique environment where interactions between the stars and the surrounding material can dramatically alter the chemical composition of stellar surfaces. One striking feature of dying Sun-like binaries is "chemical depletion", where elements that typically bond with dust (such as aluminium, iron, and titanium) appear to be missing from the stellar surface. 

In my PhD, I explored these chemical changes by studying a group of dying binary stars using detailed observations of their spectra. These findings show that the chemistry of dying stars is shaped not just by their life histories, but also by their companions and the dusty environments they leave behind.  

6pm - 6.30pm

AVA Challenge 

Join the AVA Challenge Team, NSW Space Research Network members, and more as we discuss opportunities and challenges for the Australian space industry. 

Get ready to ask questions in this engaging panel!  

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? 

In my talk I'll explain how our expanding Universe is to blame for slowing things down, and why 1500 exploding stars revealed the answer. 

6.45pm - 7.15pm

A Universe of Possibilities: STEM at Macquarie  

Push it to the limit: Revealing the secrets around dying stars  

Stars are not isolated objects. They can be surrounded by giant reservoirs of dust and gas. These are often formed when one of a pair of twin stars starts dying, shedding its outer layers, which the dying star's partner then often shepherds into enormous structures. 

These structures then interact with their host stars, affecting how they evolve and what remains after their deaths. While millions to billions of miles across, these structures are often unimaginably far away. Revealing their secrets thus requires us to push astronomy to its very limits.  

What happens to our lungs in space?  

Learn how spinning test tubes in a laboratory are helping solve the puzzle of human survival in space. 

What happens to an astronaut's lungs during a journey to Mars? While we know that astronauts can breathe normally in space, we did not understand what happens to their lung cells after months of weightlessness - until now. 

Michaela Smith's research shows us that lung cells behave dramatically differently when gravity disappears. Using ground-based machines that simulate weightlessness by constantly rotating cell samples, she shows that different types of lung cells 'cluster' into spherical structures and reduce their production of important molecules that protect against inflammation. These cellular changes could affect how astronauts' bodies respond to infections or injuries during extended missions to the Moon or Mars. 

Beyond space medicine, understanding how gravity influences cellular behaviour could also lead to new approaches for treating lung diseases and infections on Earth, where manipulating gravitational effects could become a therapeutic tool.  

7.30pm - 8pm

Science from Starlight: The Software that Makes Science-Ready Data  

Instruments on optical telescopes like the VLT and Hubble are complex opto-mechanical equipment and require several steps of processing before the collected data is ready for scientific analysis. 

Learn about the software pipelines that clean up and prepare telescope data for astronomers, and about the critical role they play in observatories. 

Born of Dust and Chaos: The Story of Planet Formation 

Have you ever wondered how planets like Earth come to exist? In this talk, we’ll explore the different ways planets can form in the universe — from tiny dust grains slowly sticking together in calm, swirling disks around young stars, to entire chunks of these disks collapsing under their own gravity to form giant planets in a flash. 

Astronomers are still uncovering the full picture, and new telescopes are revealing just how diverse planet formation can be. Whether rocky or gassy, close-in or far-out, each planet has its own origin story — and by studying them, we get closer to understanding how common worlds like ours really are. No science background needed — just bring your curiosity! 

Why are We Pointing Lasers at the sky?  

If you’ve ever had the privilege of stargazing under the darkest skies on Earth – such as those in northern Chile – you’ll know it’s not easy to pick out the most popular stars. There are simply so many of them, and the air is so thin and stable that the stars appear razor-sharp, almost magical.  

Yet, major astronomical observatories have been pointing powerful orange lasers into the sky – at first just one per telescope, and now four or more – to operate complex optical systems that improve the quality of our observations of the universe.  

In this talk, I will explain why we point lasers at the sky and what we achieve by doing so. 

9pm - 9.30pm

Fixing James Webb   

James Webb is a $10 billion NASA space telescope - but you may not know its highest resolution camera is Australian-made. This Aperture Masking Interferometer, AMI, has imaged planets being born and black holes shining bright: but until our team fixed it with cutting edge computer science, the images were too blurry to use. 

I will talk about how we managed this, and show off the beautiful images we've obtained!

Thinking about life in the Universe: where is everybody?    

The universe is vast, ancient, and filled with countless stars and potentially habitable planets. Given this, why haven't we encountered any signs of intelligent life? 

This talk explores the Fermi Paradox—the stark contrast between high estimates for the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations and our lack of evidence for them. We'll examine what the age and scale of the cosmos imply for the emergence of life, and consider possible explanations for the great silence. 

Reverse Candy Bar: What Happens When the Milky Way Eats *You*?    

Galaxies like our Milky Way grow by gobbling up smaller systems, like dwarf galaxies and star clusters. When these meals get too close, they are stretched into long streams of stars by the Galaxy’s tidal forces before their stars gradually get mixed in with the rest of the Milky Way; in some cases, they even crash head-on into the Milky Way, mingling their stars directly with the stars born in the Galaxy. 

By studying the compositions and motions of the stars in these stellar streams, as well as those already embedded in the main body of our Galaxy, we can figure out what kind of system (galaxy? star cluster?) they originally came from – essentially what our Milky Way has been “eating”. 

At the same time, the streams surrounding the Galaxy – like a string of lights around a dark Christmas tree – trace out where the mass in the Milky Way is located, including its dark matter. I will talk about what two major Australian-led international collaborations, S5 and GALAH, have learned about the Milky Way's eating habits using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Coonabarabran, NSW.