ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

Australia's science future 3-4 May 2000
Full listing of papers

Dr Brian Schmidt received his PhD from Harvard University in 1993, and after a short Fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, he came to the Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1995. Dr Schmidt is leader of the High-Z SN Search team, a collaboration of 20 astronomers on 5 continents and in 12 time zones, whose discovery of an accelerating Universe was awarded Science Magazine's Breakthrough of the Year award for 1998. He is co-convenor of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics Graduate program and works on a variety of topics in astrophysics, including gamma ray bursts, dark matter, and the formation of the solar system.

Symposium themes - The universe: Looking out – looking forward
The universe from beginning to end
by Brian Schmidt

Abstract
The last year of the second millennium finds astronomers on the brink of understanding the origin and ultimate fate of the Universe itself. Dr Schmidt will describe current research which is starting to showing us how it all began, and will eventually let us determine whether the Universe will exist forever or will violently end. A new generation of telescopes is being designed and built to address this issue, and Australia is currently at a cross-roads of choosing to participate in these projects. Dr Schmidt will describe how our involvement will let us answer the biggest questions of all.