Royal Society of NSW News & Events

"The fourth dimension and beyond - the paradox of working in unimaginable worlds"

Emeritus Scientia Professor Ian Sloan AO FRSN

Date: Wednesday 3 September 2014

Professor Ian Sloan is not content to work in an environment of four dimensions – he is quite at home in space with many more dimensions than most of us are accustomed to. Many mathematical problems can be considered as problems and multidimensional space – the question is how do we imagine these environments? The dimensions of a space can be considered to be the number of directions that you can go from any single point within it. For example, in our four-dimensional world, from any point we can go in three spatial directions, plus time. If we are in a six-dimensional environment, we can go in six directions from any given point and mathematically we don't need more than six variables to describe this environment. But why would we be interested in multidimensional spaces?

Many problems are best analysed in multi-dimensions. For example, the shop may have 250 stock items. This can be thought of as a single point in 250-dimensional space. Each stock item has a price, so there are another 250 dimensions to consider. One area where this approach has a major application is evaluating certain types of financial transactions such as derivatives.

An investor may want to analyse a potential investment in Woolworth shares, for example. The payoff might be thought of as the closing share-price over a period of 250 trading days in, say, $10 increments. Using multidimensional mathematics, the investor can calculate the expected payoff at a certain trading day on the basis of what the closing share price might be. Such calculations soon become extremely complex, in fact, too complex to be evaluated (this is known as "the curse of dimensionality" a term coined by Richard Bellman, a noted researcher in this field). And what if the payoff can take any value, rather than being in $10 increments – does this make it even harder? Well, fortunately it does not.

Using a statistical approach known as the Monte Carlo method, these highly complex functions can be evaluated quite accurately. The Monte Carlo method may be thought of as a technique whereby one randomly throws points at a target and evaluates whether the points fall on the target or outside it. If the target can be mathematically described, the functions can be evaluated with considerable accuracy after no more than a few thousand random "throws". This enables highly-complex derivative functions to be evaluated quite accurately. The problem then lies in the assumptions underlying the mathematical model used to define the "target". Flaws in the underlying assumptions have resulted in many a lost fortune!

Despite the accuracy of the Monte Carlo method, with highly complex functions the number of random throws can become very large and the question arises, can we do better than generating the throws randomly? For some problems, using a pattern, for example, a lattice has been shown to converge much more quickly.

Multidimensional mathematics is one of our most powerful tools in solving problems from financial derivatives, to metadata analysis, to cosmology. Professor Sloan provided a particularly clear insight into a highly complex and very powerful mathematical technique.

"Beauty and truth: their intersection in mathematics and science"

Robert, Lord May of Oxford, AC FRSN

Friday 29 April 2011 at 6.30 pm

Scientia Building, University of NSW

Meeting report by Donald Hector 

On 29 April 2011, Robert Lord May of Oxford, arguably the greatest mathematician that Australia has produced, was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW by the Governor. Earlier that day, Lord May presented the Dirac Lecture at the University of New South Wales, jointly sponsored by the Society. He took us on interesting exploration of some of the important concepts of mathematics, from Euclidean geometry via the concept of imaginary numbers to the mathematics of fractals and chaos theory and the extraordinary power of mathematics to describe observed real-world phenomena. 

Updating the observation by Galileo, "this grand book is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric objects", Lord May pointed out that rather than triangles and circles, today the mathematical objects are more likely to be fractals and "strange attractors". Nonetheless, as Galileo observed, and referring to the examples of Julia sets and Mandelbrot sets, there is great beauty in the elegance with which we can both describe and understand the immense complexity of the universe. He went on to explore the paradigm shift that Einstein divined from the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment that had found that the speed of light was the same for all observers. Einstein's formulation of the special theory of relativity led to a profound shift in our understanding of the relationships between momentum, mass and energy that has enabled extraordinary insights and understanding of the nature of the universe, from gravity to nuclear fission. Lord May pointed out that, regrettably, many of the great contributions do not get the recognition that they deserve. In his view, Paul Dirac was such a person – his formulation of the Dirac equation and its implication of the existence of positrons was one of the greatest steps forward in theoretical physics in the 20th century, yet his name is nowhere near as well known as that of Einstein. 

Quoting Keats "beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know", Lord May observed: well yes, but not really.

"Australia's most spectacular environmental rehabilitation project: Phillip Island, Pacific Ocean"

Dr Peter Coyn

Date: Wednesday, 1 October 2014

Perched atop a submerged seamount, in turn atop a submarine ridge, Phillip Island and its close neighbour Norfolk Island are tiny specks, the only land in a vast expanse (2.5 million square kilometres) of the southwest Pacific Ocean. Both islands were created by volcanic activity between 2.8 and 2.2 million years ago. The plateau top of the seamount, 100 x 35 kilometres, is between 30 and 75 metres below present sea level. Sequential ice ages during the last 2 million years exposed the entire plateau, an area about 100 times the size of the present islands. Such an area could have accommodated about four times as many species as the present islands. During the last ice age the entire plateau was exposed for 24,000 years until 13,000 years ago. Sea level 25 metres higher, reached 10,000 years ago, still exposed an island about 35 km long, large enough to accommodate more than double the species count of the present islands and joining these islands with dry land. An island at least this large was exposed for 60,000 years during the last ice age, before the sea reached its present level just 6,000 years ago. The generally much larger size of the islands and the ecological stress caused by their declining area, and the consequent loss of three-quarters of their species, between 13,000 and 6,000 years ago, could help explain the great biological value of the islands and Phillip Island specifically.

Phillip Island was densely vegetated when pigs were released there in 1793, followed by goats and rabbits by 1830. The feral grazers quickly destroyed the vegetation and by 1860 the island was mostly bare. Photographs dated 1906, when only rabbits remained, show landscapes almost identical to those of 1980 — almost no vegetation was present. In 1979 Dr Coyne began a three-year experimental program to investigate the effects of the rabbits and potential for vegetation re-establishment. The work was physically difficult and often hazardous. The first year's results were enough to persuade decision-makers the rabbits should be eradicated. That work began in 1981 and by 1986 the rabbits had been destroyed by a combination of an artificial strain of myxoma virus, poisoning, shooting, trapping and fumigating. The eradication program required swimming to habitat accessible only from the sea, archery to distribute the myxoma vector (rabbit fleas) to other inaccessible areas of habitat, and a lot of rock climbing on cliffs to 250 metres high. Since then the island has been transformed by new vegetation, most arising spontaneously. Some of the world's rarest plant species have been discovered, rediscovered or have increased in numbers. One has only a single genotype, two have fewer than fifty individuals and another has fewer than 250 individuals. A genus and species endemic to Phillip Island sadly was not rediscovered and at least two Phillip Island plants are extinct. Fauna have also benefitted from the revegetation, and being free of rats and cats the island has potential as a refuge for threatened fauna endemic to Norfolk Island.

"A drop of optics"

Dr Steve Lee and Dr Tri Phan, joint winners of the 2014 ANSTO Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology

Date: Wednesday 5 November 2014

The talk at the 1227th AGM was presented by Dr Steve Lee and Dr Tri Phan, joint winners of the 2014 ANSTO Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology. They received the award for developing a very inexpensive polymer lens with extraordinarily high resolution that can be used on cameras like those found on mobile telephones.

In recent years, miniaturisation has revolutionised sensors: small image sensors means that the optical device can also be miniaturised and it is much easier to get good optical qualities in a small lens than a large one. The early miniaturised lenses were ground from small pieces of glass and were quite expensive to manufacture. However, with the development of polymers with good optical qualities, high-quality lenses can now be moulded rather than being ground. But if surface tension is allowed to create the lens surface rather than moulding, surface roughness (which is almost impossible to avoid with any moulding process) can be largely eliminated.

A familiar example is the optical quality of raindrops but if the liquid used to form the lens is of much greater viscosity than water, for example, viscoelastic polymers, gravity can be used to shape the surface of the lens to give specific optical properties. The technique that Dr Lee and Dr Phan developed was to use highly viscous polydimethylsiloxane in as the polymer (this is also referred to a silicone polymer) and to suspend droplets from a small orifice so that gravity forms droplets with curvature that has the right optical characteristics. The silicone polymer can be cross-linked and thus stabilise it shape simply by putting it into an oven to cure. Different lens geometries can be obtained by applying several layers of polymer with intermediate curing steps.

One application that Dr Lee and Dr Phan have developed is to use these lenses to clip onto the cameras on mobile telephones. Standard lens on mobile telephone (these are moulded) has a roughness of 200 nm whereas the elastomer lens is around 10 nm. Consequently, much finer detail can be resolved using the polymer lens. The opportunity is to integrate lenses such as these into smart phones and use these for diagnostic and remote sensing applications.

The technology was just released at the Google "The Mobile First World" conference in Taiwan.

Lecture delivered for the Two Societies Meeting:
"Searching for nanosecond laser pulses from outer space"

Dr Ragbir Bhathal, University of Western Sydney

Tuesday 22 March 2011 at 6 pm

School of Physics, University of Sydney

Meeting report by Dr Frederick Osman 

On Tuesday 22 March 2011, the Australian Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of New South Wales held their annual Two Societies meeting at the University of Sydney and featured Dr Ragbir Bhathal on his topic of searching for very fast light flashes.

 Dr Bhathal opened his talk by saying that we should be searching for nanosecond laser pulse from ETI. He believes that ETI would have surpassed the microwave threshold and gone on to use laser pulses for intergalactic communications. A nanosecond laser pulse has several advantages, he said. Apart from its directivity, a 1015 W or more nanosecond laser pulse would outshine its star by four to seven orders of magnitude. This pulse could thus be easily detected by present day optical telescopes equipped with fast-response PMTs or APDs. Because the telescopes are being used as photon buckets they need not be highly sophisticated. The fact that the National Ignition Facility in the US has been able to generate 1015 W laser pulses although for a few nanoseconds lends credibility to the use of lasers as communication devices by ETI civilisations. The optical search strategy has been used in a dedicated mode only for the last ten years. Four groups, three in United States (Harvard University/Princeton University, University of California and the SETI Institute) and one in Australia (OZ OSETI Project at the University of Western Sydney) have led the charge for the optical search strategy. 

Dr Bhathal's optical search is the longest dedicated optical search in the Southern Hemisphere. Last year a group of Japanese scientists and engineers also joined the optical and microwave searches. However, to date no positive signals in the optical spectrum have been received. Although a laser look alike signal was detected in 2008 by Dr Bhathal emanating from the globular cluster 47 Tucanae it was dismissed after a six month search in the same region failed to detect the signal again. Considered as the father of SETI in Australia, Dr Bhathal hopes to continue the optical search with a new dedicated one-metre telescope which is on the drawing boards at the moment. Dr Bhathal also discussed the latest developments in the microwave search strategy which clocked 50 years last year and other programs which are underway for searching for life in the universe, such as searching for glycine, searching for earth like planets by extra-solar planet scientists and the Kepler mission, the Mars explorations and meteorites. 

Dr Bhathal ended his lecture by quoting from the great 19th century mathematician and physicist Karl Gauss who said that the detection of a signal from ETI "would be greater than the discovery of America". The Australian Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of New South Wales thank Dr Ragbir Bhathal for his outstanding lecture!

Lecture delivered for the Four Societies Meeting:
"Geothermal energy - current state of play and developments"

Dr Stuart McDonnell, Geodynamics Ltd

Mr Stephen de Belle, Granite Power Ltd

Thursday 24 February 2011 at 6 pm

Hamilton Room, Trade & Investment Centre, Industry & Investment NSW, Level 47, MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney

Meeting report by Donald Hector 

The annual meeting of the "Four Societies" - the Royal Society of NSW, the Australian Nuclear Association, the Nuclear Engineering Panel of Engineers Australia (Sydney Division), and the Australian Institute of Energy - heard two perspectives on geothermal energy as a major energy source for the generation of electric power. The speakers were Dr Stuart McDonnell, chief operating officer of Geodynamics Ltd and Stephen de Belle, managing director of Granite Power Ltd. Both companies are developing 'hot rocks' technology for the generation of electricity. The technological concept behind this technology is straightforward enough: a source of hot rock, typically granite at temperatures of 150-300 °C at depths between 1500 m and 5000 m below the Earth's surface, is identified. The rock is fractured and water is pumped under high pressure from the surface down through the hot rock where it is heated to very high temperatures. When the water returns to the surface, the energy is used to drive turbines which in turn generate electricity. The thermal resources in Australia are huge­- in the Cooper Basin alone, there are hot rock deposits capable of generating as much electricity as burning 750 million tonnes of coal or 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 

Of course, the devil is in the detail. It is technologically challenging and expensive to drill to these depths. In addition, there are other significant technological challenges that need to be resolved such as fluid chemistry when the hot water reacts with the minerals in the rock and the components in the system, the ability to manage multiple fracture-zones in order to extract the maximum amount of heat, the gradual reduction of the temperature of the resource over time, and the challenges in creating viable, efficient heat exchanger designs in rock several kilometres beneath the Earth's surface. 

If these technological and economic issues can be overcome, geothermal generation is well placed to provide a substantial proportion of Australia's baseload electricity demand. This could be as high as 2,300 MW of base-load capacity by 2020. Some government and private funding has already been committed with the intention to seek further capital from institutional investors during 2011.

"Belief and science: the belief/knowledge dilemma"

Barry Jones and David Malouf

Wednesday 6 April 2011 at 6 pm

The Darlington Centre, University of Sydney

Thursday 28 September 2006, 4.30 - 8.30pm

Flushed with success, the Council of the Royal Society decided it was time for a bit of a heels-up - or rather heads-down - to look at treasured items from our wonderful collection. The occasion? A soirée at the Nicholson Museum in The University of Sydney to celebrate the achievements of the previous twelve months.

In that time, the Council managed to win two grants. The first, a State Government grant of $30,000 to be used for the publication of the journal over the next three years, was the work of past president Karina Kelly and her team. The second was $5,500 through one of the Federal Government's Community Heritage Grants organized by the National Library in Canberra.

It was through this grant that our consultant historians, Dr David Branagan and Dr Peter Tyler, assessed the Society's collection of books, journals, maps, drawings, painting, photographs, lantern-slides and medals to be highly significant both historically and scientifically. Selected items were displayed in the facilities offered by the Nicholson Museum. Staff and guests donned cotton gloves to leaf through some of the precious books, which included works by the American archaeologist and naturalist Charles C. Abbott, and Opuscula, one of the most significant books in the Society's collection, written in Latin by Georg Bauer, better known by his Latin name, Georgius Agricola (1494-1555). He is considered the founder of geology as a discipline. Another book, Cyrillus in Johannem et Leviticum una cum thesauro eiusdem, was published in 1508. It is the only one held in Australia. There was also the first volume of Curtis' Botanical Magazine, beautifully illustrated by the artist Sydenham S. Edwards and published 1787. The Society holds the complete set (Volumes 1-14) and many other volumes of the Botanical Magazine by various other publishers.

Also on display were Lawrence Hargrave's aeronautical and other papers, together with some of the drawings and lantern-slides of his first flying machine, and a very rare edition of J.D. Dana's Geology, written when he accompanied W.B. Clarke around the Sydney Basin. Hand-written letters from Society member Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur were a great attraction. Many of the medals on display were from Clarke's collection. These are kept in the care of the Mitchell Library together with some 20 boxes of books and other items belonging to the Royal Society. These are to be the target of our next round of assessment and listing.

Undeniably the Society is the custodian of a remarkably important collection. It is imperative that we take every step to preserve it and to make it available to all.

Guests at the soirée included the university's Vice Chancellor, Professor Gavin Brown and his wife, Diane, the former Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University, Professor Di Yerbury, acclaimed photographer-astronomer, Professor David Malin, Scientia Professor Eugenie Lumbers from the University of New South Wales, the ABC's Robyn Science Williams and many others.

The soirée was not without its formalities. President, Professor Jak Kelly set the scene, explaining the grounds for the celebration and thanking Professor Brown for so generously arranging premises for the Royal Society. He also thanked Professor Di Yerbury for her help in housing the Society and its collection at Macquarie University for some years. Councillor John Hardie spoke about the work that had been done on the collection through the funding, and outlined some of the recommendations from Peter Tyler's report. These included the urgent need to house the collection suitably so that it could be properly conserved and made available to researchers and the public alike. He also suggested that the Society should initiate a long-term project to "return Science House to Science". He reminded guests that Science House won the first Sulman Medal for Architecture for its architects, Peddle, Thorpe and Walker, in 1932.

Society member and former president, David Branagan, who was also one of the assessors, described some of the "treasures" he had examined and the insight they give to the development of our intellectual and scientific history from Colonial times. Professor Gavin Brown thanked the Royal Society for inviting him and his wife and congratulated the Society on its achievements in recent years.

It was after the formalities that guests were free to peruse the displays to the sounds of restful chamber music from the trio, Sound of Melody, adding to the already splendid atmosphere of the museum itself. David Branagan and members of the Council's grant committee were on hand to assist with enquiries and to point out items of special interest.

The evening finished on a high note when Society received an unexpected accolade from the Senior Curator of the Nicholson Museum, Michael Turner, who said that he had really enjoyed having so erudite and enthusiastic a group of people at the museum.

Robyn Stutchbury

His Honour Justice James Allsop, President of the NSW Court of Appeal

The Society held a very successful Annual Dinner at the Forum Restaurant, Darlington Centre at the University of Sydney on 13 March. The Guest-of-Honour was His Honour Justice James Allsop, President of the NSW Court of Appeal who replaced our Chief Patron, the Governor-General at relatively short notice. The Society thanks His Honour for his attendance and for his very insightful Occasional Address, which touched on the relationship between the Society and the legal profession.

The other highlight of the evening was the presentation of our Awards for 2008. His Honour presented the Clarke Medal (this year it was for botany) to Professor Bradley Potts from the University of Tasmania and the Edgeworth David Medal for a young scientist to Dr Adam Micolich of the University of NSW. Associate Profesor Bill Sewell read the citations which were followed by very generous remarks by the recipients in accepting the Awards.

For further details see the March 2009 Bulletin No. 323.

On Wednesday 7 May, the annual awards evening and annual dinner was held at the Union University and Schools Club in Sydney. The dinner was extremely well attended and the address by Professor Barry Jones AC FAA FACE FAHA FASSA FTSE DistFRSN on the attack on the scientific method stimulated a lot of discussion. During the evening, the Society's 2013 awards were presented and the inaugural group of eleven Fellows were presented with their certificates.

The President, Dr Donald Hector, presented the Society's 2013 awards. The Edgeworth David Medal was presented to Assoc Prof David Wilson, for his outstanding work on modelling HIV/AIDS and using this information to develop treatment and prevention strategies. Prof Michelle Simmons DistFRSN was awarded the Walter Burfitt Medal and Prize and Professor Brien Holden was awarded the James Cook Medal for his work in treating myopia (a leading cause of preventable blindness), particularly in developing world countries. The Clarke Medal could not be presented to distinguished geologist William Griffin, as he was overseas and unable to attend.

The Society was proud to have Professor Barry Jones AC DistFRSN present the second annual Distinguished Fellow's Lecture at the Society's annual dinner on Wednesday 7 May 2014. Professor Jones is the only person to be a Fellow of all four of Australia's learned Academies.

"The real significance of hobbits: hominid biogeography in South East Asia"

Professor Michael J. Morwood, Professor in Archaeology, School of Earth and Environmental Studies, University of Wollongong

Wednesday 4 November 2009 at 7 pm

Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, University of Sydney

In 2004 Professor Mike Morwood led the team that found the skeleton of a previously undiscovered human species on the island of Flores. The 'hobbit' skeleton was of a much smaller stature than present-day humans, being that of an adult who was only one metre in height. Evidence suggests that these 'hobbits' may have lived from 95,000 to 13,000 years ago and were probably descendants of the Homo erectus population that had evolved in isolation on Flores. It is believed that the 'hobbit' may have still been in existence when the 16th century Dutch traders arrived at the island. This discovery has raised questions about the nature of human of evolution.

The discovery of an endemic species of human on Flores was unexpected, but no more so than finding evidence of Homins on the islands from 880,000 years ago. This lecture will explain why the 2004 discovery was not wholly unexpected with reference to the faunal biogeography of South East Asia. It will conclude with some of the implications for early hominin and modern human dispersal mechanisms, and for the future archaeological research in the region.

The speaker's presentation can be found here: Mike Morwood's Talk (5 MB PDF).

Professor Michael Morwood has carried out extensive research in New Zealand and throughout Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory, both as an academic researcher and as a public archaeologist. He is particularly interested in ethnohistory, material culture studies and the social-ceremonial role of art in Aboriginal Culture.

In 2007, Professor Morwood and Penny Van Oosterzee won the John Mulvaney Book Award for the publication of "The Discovery of the Hobbit: The Scientific Breakthrough that Changed the Face of Human History" documenting his work on the Indonesian island of Flores. In addition to his work in Indonesia, he is an expert in Australian Aboriginal rock art and the author of "Visions from the Past: The Archaeology of Australian Aboriginal Art".

"Climate change through the lens of the geological record: the example of sea level"

Professor Kurt Lambeck, AO FAA FRS
Distinguished Professor of Geophysics, Australian National University
President of the Australian Academy of Science

Friday 30 October 2009 at 5.30 pm
Eastern Avenue Auditorium, University of Sydney

The 2009 Clarke Memorial Lecture is presented in conjunction with The University of Sydney and The Geological Society of Australia

Climate change has been with the planet since the time of the formation of the oceans and atmosphere and is recorded, albeit imperfectly, in the geological record. One of these records is the change in sea level through time, a complex variable that contains implicit information not only on climate but also on the tectonic and geological evolution of the planet. He will address aspects of the underpinning science and what we can learn from it, focussing on the best-known part of the record, that for the last glacial cycle.

The modern instrumental record is much more precise and has higher resolution but will also contain in addition to the 'natural' variability any new signals that may result from human impact on climate. The challenge is to separate these 'natural' and 'anthropogenic' forcings if forecasts of future change are to be meaningful.

The problems encountered are similar to all other indicators of climate change – of separating natural and human forcing from instrumental and geological or historical records when the length of the latter are about the same as the time that human impacts may have been effective.

Professor Lambeck will use the sea level record as an illustration of many of the issues that need to be understood for a meaningful interpretation of the evidence. In so doing he will raise the role of the IPCC and where the IPCC findings are tracking in 2009; and how the public debate on climate change appears to be becoming increasingly confused while the underpinning science is becoming more robust.

The speaker's presentation can be found here: Kurt Lambeck's Clarke Lecture (2.9 MB PDF).

Professor Lambeck has been at the Australian National University since 1977, including ten years as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences. Before that he was at the University of Paris and the French Space Agency (1970-1977), and at the Harvard-Smithsonian observatory (1967-1970). His doctorate is from Oxford (1967) and his first degree from the University of New South Wales (1963). He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1984 and became its President in 2006.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (1994), and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1994), Academia Europaea (1999), the Académie des Sciences, Institut de France (2005), and the US National Academy of Sciences (2009)

"The SKAMP project - a telescope reborn to look back in time"

Professor Anne Green
Head, School of Physics, University of Sydney

Wednesday 7 October 2009 at 7 pm
Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, University of Sydney

The speaker's presentation can be found here: Anne Green's Talk (3.6 MB PDF).