The Zone Above Conference | Professor Matthew Bailes - Discovery of Gravitational Waves

On 8 October 2018, the Perth USAsia Centre and The University of Western Australia hosted "The Zone Above: The Indo-Pacific Era in Space" conference which explored the shared opportunities and challenges for Australia's role in the Indo-Pacific era in space.

Professor Matthew Bailes delivered a presentation on the discovery of gravitational waves. Professor Bailes is the Director of OzGrav, the ARC Centre of Excellence for gravitational wave discovery and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. His work explores the Universe at its most extreme, from relativistic stars such as neutron stars and black holes that require the use of Einstein's general theory of relativity to be understood, to the mysterious Fast Radio Bursts, enigmatic flashes of radio waves from the distant universe with an unknown origin. His team builds supercomputers to process data from the world's largest radio telescopes and to search for gravitational waves - a new window on the Universe.