Science Media Centre

A New Zealand scientist has been awarded a prestigious medal in recognition of his furthering the work of Albert Einstein. The Einstein Medal will be awarded to Prof Roy Kerr from the University of Canterbury  for his “Kerr Solution” which puts to rest a gravitational field equation posited by Einstein. The medal is awarded annually [...]

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Serge Haroche and David J. Winelan. The Laureates independently invented and developed ground-breaking methods for measuring and manipulating individual particles while preserving their quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought unattainable. The official Nobel announcement and background on the award winning research can be [...]

“Everything you thought you knew about electrostatics is probably wrong”  declares the first line of a Nature News article examining recent research from MacDiarmid Physics Professor John Lekner. Prof Lekner’s research appears on the international science news site by virtue of it’s findings – which seem to go against the classic physics adage, ‘opposites attract’. [...]

For the NZ Herald Online, Sarah Daniell poses 12 questions to well-known Physicist Sir Paul Callaghan. An excerpt (read in full here): Physicist Sir Paul Callaghan is a remarkable figure in the world of science. He has put himself and New Zealand on the world stage and has brought science to the people. Sir Paul [...]

Roger Highfield, UK science writer and author of The Physics of Christmas, talks to Radio New Zealand’s Kathryn Ryan about the logistics of a jolly fat man visiting 842 million households in one night. Listen below

The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to a group of astronomers whose research revealed that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 was awarded “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae” with one half to Saul Perlmutter and [...]

Physicists have said – in a paper and in a seminar at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) – that subatomic particles known as neutrinos can break the the speed of light Albert Einstein held up as a cosmic speed limit 106 years ago.  They said the neutrinos raced from a particle accelerator outside [...]

Adam Dudding writes in the Sunday Star Times about New Zealand scientist Peter Schwerdtfeger, who was recently awarded the prestigious Humboldt prize, in recognition of his work in theoretical physics and chemistry. Schwerdtfeger, who is currently based at the Auckland campus of Massey University, investigates chemical reactions at the level of individual atoms, and is [...]

British scientists say that the sun’s coronal loops vibrate like the strings of a guitar, and claim that they have been able to record these sounds. They recreated the sounds by looking at images of the loops, and then turning the visible vibrations into sounds. An excerpt: (read in full here) “Using satellite images of [...]

Phoebe Falconer writes in the New Zealand Herald about the groundbreaking research of Sir Ian Axford, who died recently aged 77. He was particularly renowned for his work on planetary science, comets and solar systems. An excerpt: (read in full here) “He was director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany [...]