FREE PUBLIC LECTURE
presented in conjunction with the
Women In Physics Group,
by the Australian Institute of Physics (SA branch) https://aip.org.au/category/sa/ Email: aip_branchsecretary_sa@aip.org.au

The Claire Corani Memorial Lecture
The South Australian lecture in the
2018 AIP Women in Physics Lecture Tour

at 6:30pm–7:40pm on Thursday 9th August 2018

in the Napier G04 Lecture Theatre
Napier Building, the University of Adelaide, North Terrace campus.

Abstract: When we press FIRE on the most powerful laser in the world,
we deliver a packet of light that is a thousand billion billion times more
intense than the sunlight you feel while out on Bondi beach in peak
summer! That’s super intense! We can use this extreme power to
recreate the conditions at the centre of Sun and in the process release
vast amounts of energy in a clean and safe way. Harnessing this power
for electricity generation is an inspiring story. It combines pure and
applied physics and requires engineering to handle the most extreme conditions in our solar system!

Biography: Ceri Brenner is a plasma physicist and innovator who uses the most powerful lasers in the world to study what happens when extreme bursts of light come into contact with matter and is using this knowledge to design new X-ray technology that can see through steel! The extreme physics she studies can also be applied for understanding supernova explosions in space or how we can ignite a star on earth for clean electricity generation.

The Claire Corani Memorial prizes, available for award to the top second-year female Physics student at each SA university in 2017, will be presented at the lecture.