New Insights into the Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth. This project aims to provide new insights into the origin of life on Earth, life’s diversification through the Precambrian, and the co-evolution of life and early Earth environments. It will be discipline-leading in that it will take the study of early life to the sub-micrometre and hence sub-cellular level. This will facilitate new opportunities for identifying the types of life present during early Earth history, their metabolisms, c ....New Insights into the Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth. This project aims to provide new insights into the origin of life on Earth, life’s diversification through the Precambrian, and the co-evolution of life and early Earth environments. It will be discipline-leading in that it will take the study of early life to the sub-micrometre and hence sub-cellular level. This will facilitate new opportunities for identifying the types of life present during early Earth history, their metabolisms, cellular chemistry and interactions with their environment. This project aims to also provide new search engines and more robust assessment criteria for life on other planets, and help to resolve specific scientific controversies, for example, the validity of claims for cellular life from 3.5 billion-year-old rocks.Read moreRead less
New frontiers for Australian exoplanetary science. There can be few questions more fundamental for a scientist's research to address than 'Is our home here on Earth unique? Or ubiquitous?' This project will undertake world-leading observations using revolutionary new Australian facilities, to enable breakthrough results that bear on this question.
Extrasolar terrestrial planets - How Earth-like can they be? This research will answer the key question for current exoplanetary studies and searches - 'Are there other Earths in the Universe?' - by studying not only the processes via which terrestrial planets form, but also by modelling the elemental composition of extrasolar terrestrial planets so that we can understand just how 'Earth-like' they can be.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE150100087
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$760,000.00
Summary
Veloce - Australia's Next-Generation Planet Foundry. Veloce - Australia's next-generation planet foundry: This project will deliver to Australian astronomers a high-resolution, ultra-stabilised, red-wavelength-optimised spectrograph capable of delivering high-precision doppler velocities for the transiting exoplanet host-stars being discovered now by southern hemisphere transit-planet searches, and for the coming wave of discoveries to be made by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TES ....Veloce - Australia's Next-Generation Planet Foundry. Veloce - Australia's next-generation planet foundry: This project will deliver to Australian astronomers a high-resolution, ultra-stabilised, red-wavelength-optimised spectrograph capable of delivering high-precision doppler velocities for the transiting exoplanet host-stars being discovered now by southern hemisphere transit-planet searches, and for the coming wave of discoveries to be made by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). In addition it will enable a vast suite of new research programs in exoplanetary science and galactic archaeology, as well as providing a sound base of ultra-stable infrastructure enabling future expansion to cover the full optical wavelength range at minimal cost.Read moreRead less
Defining the biological boundaries to sustain extant life on Mars. Key challenges for life are access to water & energy, and in cold, arid environments trace gas chemotrophy is used by soil microbiomes to sustain life. Given the cold, hyper-arid conditions on the Martian surface are analogues to ice-free regions of Antarctica, atmospheric chemoautotrophic ecosystems are the most promising ecological model for Martian life in the present or recent past. This project is significant, as it aims to ....Defining the biological boundaries to sustain extant life on Mars. Key challenges for life are access to water & energy, and in cold, arid environments trace gas chemotrophy is used by soil microbiomes to sustain life. Given the cold, hyper-arid conditions on the Martian surface are analogues to ice-free regions of Antarctica, atmospheric chemoautotrophic ecosystems are the most promising ecological model for Martian life in the present or recent past. This project is significant, as it aims to define the limits to energy, water and carbon production via trace gas chemotrophy. We will integrate biology with astrophysics to identify at which point life ceases. Expected outcomes include new knowledge on the biological envelope, with benefits to include the identification of Martian regions for exploration.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210100291
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$414,000.00
Summary
Conferring life-like functions to protocells. For life to have arisen, simple self-assembled chemicals must have performed key life-like functions. This project aims to generate new knowledge in the fields of soft condensed matter physics and astrobiology by understanding how primitive life could have obtained nutrients and completed “cell” division without proteins. This ambitious goal is expected to not only contribute towards understanding the origins of life, one of the grand challenges in s ....Conferring life-like functions to protocells. For life to have arisen, simple self-assembled chemicals must have performed key life-like functions. This project aims to generate new knowledge in the fields of soft condensed matter physics and astrobiology by understanding how primitive life could have obtained nutrients and completed “cell” division without proteins. This ambitious goal is expected to not only contribute towards understanding the origins of life, one of the grand challenges in science, but also to elucidate principles in membrane biophysics and self-assembly. The fundamental scientific findings will be applied to making responsive capsules that can confer advanced functionalities to soft materials. Several international collaborations are anticipated.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE180100165
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$792,859.00
Summary
Veloce Verde+Azzuro - Tripling the Power of Australia's Planet Foundry. This project aims to better understand humanity’s place in the Universe, including questions such as whether we are alone or if our home in the Solar System is unique or common. This project will enable new observations using a revolutionary Australian facility, Veloce Verde+Azzuro. Moving beyond discovering habitable planets around dim red stars, it will enable science on the properties and system architectures of planets o ....Veloce Verde+Azzuro - Tripling the Power of Australia's Planet Foundry. This project aims to better understand humanity’s place in the Universe, including questions such as whether we are alone or if our home in the Solar System is unique or common. This project will enable new observations using a revolutionary Australian facility, Veloce Verde+Azzuro. Moving beyond discovering habitable planets around dim red stars, it will enable science on the properties and system architectures of planets orbiting stars like the Sun. It will deliver a ten-fold increase in collecting power for Sun-like stars, providing understanding of how exoplanetary systems, and our Solar System, were formed.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE160100014
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$550,000.00
Summary
VeloceCal: Hyper-Calibrating Australia's Planet Foundry. VeloceCal: hyper-calibrating Australia's planet foundry:
VeloceCal aims to deliver a hyper-calibration capability to Australia's premier high-resolution optical spectrograph, such that instrumental drifts will make an insignificant contribution to the system's Doppler velocity measurement capabilities. This would transform Australian capabilities for the measurement of masses (and so densities) for the lowest mass planets which will be em ....VeloceCal: Hyper-Calibrating Australia's Planet Foundry. VeloceCal: hyper-calibrating Australia's planet foundry:
VeloceCal aims to deliver a hyper-calibration capability to Australia's premier high-resolution optical spectrograph, such that instrumental drifts will make an insignificant contribution to the system's Doppler velocity measurement capabilities. This would transform Australian capabilities for the measurement of masses (and so densities) for the lowest mass planets which will be emerging from NASA's next-generation Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) from 2017 onwards. VeloceCal would play a pivotal role in determining whether the smallest planets found by TESS are terrestrial (like the Earth) or icy (like Neptune), and in unambiguously discovering terrestrial planets orbiting low-mass stars in habitable orbits.Read moreRead less
Artificial Self-Replication of Peptide Nanocapsules. Replication is key to the operation of biology, but how molecular replicators arose spontaneously on early Earth remains an open question. The ability of molecules to self-replicate must have come before the development of the highly evolved enzymes that biology currently employs. The aim of this Future Fellowship is to develop a peptide nanocapsule capable of replicating itself nonenzymatically by self-templated ligation, thus offering a plat ....Artificial Self-Replication of Peptide Nanocapsules. Replication is key to the operation of biology, but how molecular replicators arose spontaneously on early Earth remains an open question. The ability of molecules to self-replicate must have come before the development of the highly evolved enzymes that biology currently employs. The aim of this Future Fellowship is to develop a peptide nanocapsule capable of replicating itself nonenzymatically by self-templated ligation, thus offering a platform that possesses the traits needed for Darwinian evolution to emerge. By obtaining a better understanding of the design and function of self-replicating systems, this project is expected to transform our understanding of some of the key chemical principles needed for life's emergence.Read moreRead less
A New Era for Australian Exoplanetary Science. There are few areas of learning that engage the public in cutting-edge science and technology more than astronomy – and few areas of astronomy that engage and fascinate as thoroughly as the study of planets and astrobiology. This research program will not only discover new rocky and gas giant planets orbiting other stars, but tell us about how those planets formed – allowing us to answer the key question for current exoplanetary research – “Are ther ....A New Era for Australian Exoplanetary Science. There are few areas of learning that engage the public in cutting-edge science and technology more than astronomy – and few areas of astronomy that engage and fascinate as thoroughly as the study of planets and astrobiology. This research program will not only discover new rocky and gas giant planets orbiting other stars, but tell us about how those planets formed – allowing us to answer the key question for current exoplanetary research – “Are there other Earths in the Universe?”Read moreRead less