Ok, so this report is actually in relation to Europe but we can consider it relevant to the future of education in Western Australia too.

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Physicists from leading astronomy research countries including China, USA, France, Germany and India have committed to the development of a $160 million gravitational wave detector at Gingin, 1hour north of Perth. The detector will be finished in 2016 and will be one of only four in the world.

The detector will be capable of detecting and measuring gravity waves which are believed to be the after effects of the big bang. The detector whcih uses two diagonal lasers will be so sensitive that it will be capable of measuring gravitational waves that were produced micro seconds after the big bang.

Scientists from the University of Western Australia will be leading the project.

With the possibility of securing the SKA telescope and now this gravity detector, Western Australia and Perth are well positioned to lead astronomy in the Southern Hemisphere.

Distributed generation of renewable energy is off to a rocky start, but it's finally making some headway.

The research side is looking good. The $28 billion request in the US president's FY 2011 budget for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy includes large increases for programs including wind, weatherisation, smart grid technologies, and solar — plus $58 million for National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) infrastructure and $50 million to stimulate clean energy education.

An additional $300 million would support the Advanced Research Project Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) initiative. Modeled after the DARPA program that resulted in the Internet, ARPA-E will fund the fundamental research to incubate the energy grid of the future, what Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe termed the Enernet.

Yes, this is about the US, but we live in their shadow & adopt their technologies. The Internet was invented there but we all benefit.