News: Honours Projects - Nigel Spooner
Noble gases in ancient fluid droplets in minerals
![Cornelia Wilkes honours project Noble gases in ancient fluid droplets in minerals](/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2020-09/cornelia-wilkes-honours_project.jpg?h=9a2ab9c4&itok=IIKIPggK)
Honours projects: Extract rare noble gas isotopes from specific mineral phases such as quartz.
[Read more about Noble gases in ancient fluid droplets in minerals]
Testing for irradiated foods
![Food market](/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2020-10/food-market-9205_UoA.jpg?h=78e8aac7&itok=jqpQ-Iag)
Honours project: Optimise methodologies to detect irradiated food by optically-stimulated luminescence.
Fossils under a new light
![Fossil front visible image Georgios Tsiminis](/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2020-11/honours-fossil-front-visible.jpg?h=b646a0fe&itok=rsvzpMcx)
Honours projects: Use new fluorescence imaging techniques to analyse fossils that range in age from half-a-billion to some tens of thousands of years old.
Saving megafauna from bacteria
![A skeleton of a Marsupial Lion (Thylacoleo carnifex) in the Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte Caves National Park Karora, Public domain](/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2020-11/honours-thylacoleo_skeleton_in_Naracoorte_Caves.jpg?h=2f83cd36&itok=LadQJXBS)
Honours projects: Identify and image biofilms that threaten the Naracoorte Caves National Park fossils.
It’s space water, but not as we know it
![Full moon. Image: Gregory H. Revera, CC BY-SA 3.0](/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2020-11/honours-full-moon.jpg?h=bfc5f87a&itok=d7Xyypqw)
Honours projects: Explore laser-induced fluorescence of water and aqueous minerals for space applications.
Environmental Luminescence
![Luminescence](/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2019-03/optical-dating.jpg?h=a1e1a043&itok=a63r-P0G)
Honours projects: The Environmental Luminescence group studies a range of real-world problems requiring the detection of ultra-low levels of light, of relevance to Environmental Monitoring, Quaternary Geology, Archaeology, Palaeontology, Earth Sciences, and Defence and National Security.