The Marie Curie Lecture Tour 2026: Painting the Universe

Dr Karelle Siellez brings Painting the Universe to the Newcastle Museum on Friday 21 August, as part of the national Marie Curie Lecture Tour. It's a National Science Week event, presented by the Australian Institute of Physics in collaboration with the City of Newcastle and the School of Science at the University of Newcastle.

Siellez is a French astrophysicist and lecturer at the University of Tasmania, specialising in multi-messenger astronomy. She was part of the team that made the first detection of a gamma-ray burst and gravitational waves from the same cosmic event — a discovery that earned the 2017 Breakthrough Prize. She's also an award-winning science communicator who brings art, sound and storytelling into her work, and that's exactly what she'll be doing here. The talk weaves those threads together to explore gravitational waves and the collisions that create the elements we're made of, using 'multi-messenger' signals like kilonovae and gamma-ray bursts.

The session runs about an hour and 45 minutes and is recommended for ages 10 and over. If you can't make it in person, there's a livestream available via the AIP website. The talk itself is from 6:30 to 7:30pm, with doors open and refreshments from 6pm, so you've got plenty of time to grab a drink and settle in before she starts. Tickets are A$10 for adults and free for under 18s, and it's all held at the Newcastle Museum, 6 Workshop Way, Newcastle 2300.